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U.S.
Blasted for Sustaining Embargo on Cuba
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - 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 U.S. governments
and voted against a U.N. resolution calling
for an end to the 47-year-old U.S. economic,
commercial and financial embargo against the
Caribbean island nation.
Of the 192 member states, an overwhelming
187 voted Wednesday 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 U.S. foreign policy.
"Without breaking with the decades-long,
criminal blockade of Cuba, there will be no
actual transformation of U.S. foreign
policy," Fletcher said.
He said the U.S. 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 U.N. 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 released
Wednesday: "U.S. 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 U.N. debate, Ambassador
Zhang Yesui of China told delegates the U.S.
embargo not only constituted a serious
violation of the purposes and principles of
the U.N. 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 U.S. 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 U.S.
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, U.S.
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 U.S. citizens can
donate to individuals in Cuba.
The Obama administration has enhanced the
ability of U.S. telecommunications companies
to pursue agreements to provide service to
Cuba and has made it easier for U.S.
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 U.S. 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 minster 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 U.S. 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.
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