Washington’s Blockade Is Not Symbolic

In 2005, 182 UN member states, that is 92 percent of the total UN body, demanded an end to the blockade and once again rejected its extraterritorial character as a violation of the principles of international law.

Despite this, the US government has ignored the will of the majority of the international community and, far from complying with the resolution, approved in May 2004 and broadened in July 2006 a plan tightening the White House’s aggressive and subversive measures aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution.

In a show of pure cynicism the mass media, financed by the White House and the right wing Cuban American elements in southern Florida, complains that the "embargo" (as they like to call it) is just a pretext from Havana to justify the difficult economic situation provoked by the inefficient socialist system.

But here, to refute these lies, is proof of the non-stop extraterritorial activities deployed in all the corners of the world by the White House and the officials of its foreign service to hound Cuba’s commercial and financial operations.

There is also an intervention plan; this consists of dozens of instructions, communications and negotiations with embassies to pressure and threaten governments and the business community with the extraterritorial Helms-Burton and Torricelli laws.

Just a few examples, will be enough to show that Washington’s blockade against Cuba, which is the longest and cruellest in the history of humanity, can be characterized as genocide. According to Article 2, Clause C of the Geneva Convention, genocide is an economic war, according to the definition of the London Naval Conference of 1907, and is an essential component of the policies of state terrorism.

The Torricelli Law, in force since 1992, prohibits Cuban trade with US subsidiaries in third nations. One of the most recent examples, in 2005, comes from a Brazilian firm which was prohibited from selling turbines and compressors for the nickel industry just because it was a branch of a US company.

On its part, the Helms-Burton Law, approved in 1996, turned the blockade into a law. Its Title 3 says that businesses in third nations that do business with the island would be tried in US courts.

Companies doing business with Cuba are penalized in that Chapter 4 prohibits the entry into the US by those companies’ officials and directors as well as their family members.

According to this legislation and other measures directed exclusively against the small Caribbean island, the exportation of Cuban products into the US is prohibited. Likewise, products and equipment that contain more than 10 percent of their materials in US components cannot be sold to the island.

Companies in third countries cannot supply the US with merchandise that contains Cuban raw materials.

Also due to the restrictions imposed, Havana cannot use US dollars in its international transactions. Any payment in dollars from and to Cuba is confiscated and those responsible will be fined.

Cuba does not have access to international financial institutions. Only in 2005, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank earmarked almost 12 billion dollars destined to the execution of development programs in Latin America and the Caribbean. Not one single dollar went to Cuba.

This anti-Cuba phobia has reached the point that last February a Cuban business delegation that was participating in the Cuba-US business conference on energy in Mexico City was expelled form the Maria Isabel Sheraton Hotel by orders of the US Treasury Department.

The hotel management confiscated the deposit that the Cuban delegation had made and sent it to the Office of Foreign Assets of the Treasury Department, adding to the Cuban funds that have been frozen by the US.

There are endless the examples of Washington’s anti Cuba policy, but its enough to point out that the economic damage inflicted against the Cuban people since 1959 reached over 86 billion dollars. In only 2005, it reached $4 billion.

The US blockade as you can see, is not symbolic; the damage and suffering which it has caused the Cuban people is part of a failed policy which has not achieved its objective: to destroy the Cuban Revolution.