US blamed for sustaining embargo on Cuba
Thalif Deen
The majority of UN member states continued to vote in favour of an
end to US embargo against Cuba.
The administration of President Barack Obama, which has vowed to
improve relations with sanctions-hit Cuba, refused to break away from
the traditional stand taken by successive US governments and voted
against a UN resolution calling for an end to the 47-year-old US
economic, commercial and financial embargo against the Caribbean island
nation.
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Bill
Fletcher |
Bruno
Rodriguez |
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Dayan
Jayatilleka speaking at an UN Conference |
Of the 192 member states, an overwhelming 187 voted on 28 October in
favour of the resolution (as against 185 last year), with only three
against (the United States, Israel and Palau), and two abstentions
(Marshall Islands and Micronesia).
This was the 18th consecutive year the United States remained largely
isolated in a General Assembly vote on one of “the most enduring trade
embargoes in history” imposed on Cuba back in 1962.
The annual vote is routinely viewed as a political and moral victory
for Cuba because diplomatic support for the United States has
progressively declined over the last 18 years.
The widespread reaction, both inside and outside the United Nations,
was directed against the United States - and this year, specifically
against the Obama administration.
Bill Fletcher, Jr., executive editor of BlackCommentator.com, told
IPS the question for the Obama administration is whether it is committed
to transforming the image of the United States around the world or
whether it is committed to transforming the substance of US foreign
policy.
“Without breaking with the decades-long, criminal blockade of Cuba,
there will be no actual transformation of US foreign policy,” Fletcher
said.
He said the US blockade of Cuba is an embarrassment; for the people
of Cuba, however, it is the source of continuous stress and difficulty.
“The fact that the Cuban people have been able to withstand the
blockade is a tribute to them. The Obama administration needs to step
into the 21st century,” said Fletcher.
Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Centre for Democracy in the
Americas, said: “President Obama should take this UN vote for what it is
- a sign that our country needs to act in the world like it’s 2009 and
not 1959, drop the embargo, and engage openly and directly with Cuba.”
John McAuliff, executive director of the New York-based Fund for
Reconciliation and Development, said in a statement: “US hypocrisy in
defence of the embargo is equaled by Israel’s hypocrisy in voting with
us. Its own citizens, unlike Americans, vacation, invest and work in
Cuba.”
Speaking during the UN debate, Ambassador Zhang Yesui of China told
delegates the US embargo not only constituted a serious violation of the
purposes and principles of the UN charter but it also immensely
undermined the Cuban people’s right to survival and development.
The Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing nations,
called on the United States “to bring an end to the five-decades-old
embargo and to fully adhere to the principles of mutual respect and
non-interference in the internal affairs of a sisterly country.”
Speaking on behalf of the G77 and China, Sudanese Ambassador
Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, said: “The deepening impact of the
global economic crisis on Cuba and the continued embargo by the United
States will continue to further aggravate the hardships for the people
of Cuba.”
Dayan Jayatilleka, until recently Sri Lanka’s permanent
representative to the office of the United Nations in Geneva and a
widely-regarded expert on Cuba, told IPS that every year since the
resolution saw the light of day, the United States has “suffered a
diplomatic Bay of Pigs in full view of the world”. It is a pity and a
paradox that this continues even under the Obama administration, he
said.
“President Obama has sought to restore the United States to the moral
high ground, combining ethics with realism,” Jayatilleka said.
But the decades-long embargo of Cuba is neither ethical nor
beneficial to the United States, said Jayatilleka, author of “Fidel’s
Ethics of Violence: the Moral Dimension of the Political Thought of
Fidel Castro”, co-published by the University of Michigan Press in the
US and Pluto Press, London.
He said the embargo deprives the United States of the moral high
ground and weakens its standing in general while damaging the
credibility of its stand on other international issues.
“It shows a continuity of policy in a matter where no benefit is
reaped by such continuity, not least because it places the USA at sharp
variance with the whole of Latin America, the progressive
administrations of which should be the natural allies and partners of
the Obama presidency,” he said.
He pointed out that the voters of the US state of Florida, home to
the country’s largest Cuban American community, have also shown their
willingness to depart from the old rigid policy on Cuba.
Trying to soften the negative voting, US Ambassador Susan Rice told
delegates that in recent months the Obama administration has undertaken
several steps to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their
desire to freely determine their country’s future.
“We have promoted family visits and the free flow of information to
and from the Cuban people,” Rice said.
She also pointed out that the United States lifted restrictions on
family visits and remittances and expanded the amounts of humanitarian
items that US citizens can donate to individuals in Cuba.
The Obama administration has enhanced the ability of US
telecommunications companies to pursue agreements to provide service to
Cuba and has made it easier for US agricultural producers to pursue
contracts with Cuban buyers.
“These are important steps and we hope they can be the starting point
for further changes in the relationship,” Rice added.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla provided a long list
of urgently needed medicines that US companies are barred from selling
to Cuba because of the embargo.
“Since the election of President Obama, there has not been any change
in the implementation of the economic, commercial and financial blockade
against Cuba. The blockade remains intact,” he told delegates.
“It continues to be an absurd policy that causes scarcities and
sufferings. It is a mass, flagrant and systematic violation of human
rights,” Parrilla said.
The foreign minister said that in the Geneva Convention of 1948, it
was classified as an act of genocide: “It is ethically unacceptable.”
Rice responded by saying the United States regrets Cuba’s attempts to
label “inappropriately and incorrectly US trade restrictions on Cuba as
an act of genocide”.
“Such an egregious misuse of the term diminishes the real suffering
of victims of genocide elsewhere in the world,” she added.
Third World Network Features
(The writer is UN Bureau Chief and Regional Director for the Inter
Press Service (IPS).
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