On the picture Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
There has never been in modern history a system of coercive, unilateral measures from one country against another that has lasted as long as the one imposed by the government of the United States of America against Cuba since the early 1960s.
At that time, the U.S. government could not accept that a group of Cuban men and women led a radical revolution that ended their neocolonial domination that violated the sovereignty and independence of a country that was proud of its origins.
The United States started to use all kinds of strategies to overthrow the triumphant Revolution: the economic, commercial and financial war was one of them. It created a complex situation for the Cuban economy, which has had to face all kind of difficulties and looks for the most innovative ways to move forward.
In all these years, the Cuban people have suffered the impact of the U.S. blockade and have suffered immeasurable human and material losses. The blockade, in one way or another, affects multiple aspects of the life of Cuban citizens.
It has been proved that the blockade is the main hurdle in Cuba’s development and the economic damage caused during almost six decades of implementation amounts to USD$ 753,688 billion, if we consider the devaluation of the dollar against the gold.
Even though Cuba and the United States reestablished diplomatic relations in the summer of 2015 and despite all the modifications introduced in the implementation of the blockade by the government of President Barack Obama and his calling on the Congress to lift it, there are several key elements of this policy that remain in force, thus hindering the advances towards the normalization of the relations between the two countries.
Contradictorily to what has been done, the prosecution to the international financial transactions to Cuba has increased under Obama’s administration and the retaliations against sovereign States and companies worldwide that maintain trade relations with Cuba have also escalated significantly.
Recently, the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, presented to the international press the report on the Resolution 70/5 of the General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA), in which he offered up-to-date information on the losses caused to Cuba by the unilateral siege established by Washington. It is expected that, as every year, this report will be voted in the multilateral forum, at the end of October.
The U.S. blockade against Cuba violated the International Law and it is a massive, blatant and systematic violation of the human rights of the people in the Caribbean country that must end immediately, without conditions or pressure of any kind.
In 2015, 191 member States voted against that policy that seeks to exterminate an entire people. The blockade was only supported by two countries: the United States and Israel.
Cuba and its people trust they will continue to count on the support of the international community and their rightful demand to end the economic, financial and commercial blockade that has been unfairly and unilaterally imposed by the government of the United States of America.