Cuba Will Never Be Defeated

November 2, 2008

The following is excerpted from Granma International.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque affirmed before the United Nations on October 29 that the U.S. blockade, maintained for close to 50 years, will never defeat the Cuban people.

"From this forum I reiterate; they can never defeat the Cuban people. Neither blockades nor hurricanes can dishearten us. There will be no human or natural force capable of subjecting the Cuban people," he affirmed.

"If an example is needed, there are the five Cuban heroes, fighters against terrorism, who have already served 10 years of unjust and cruel incarceration in U.S. prisons, and who are a symbol of our people’s determination to defend with dignity their freedom and independence."

Pérez Roque likewise condemned increased U.S. financial and material support for the actions of mercenary groups to defeat Cuba’s constitutional order. He said that, to this end, the Bush government has approved an additional $46 million for internal subversion on the island.

It has also channeled a further $39 million into maintaining illegal radio and television broadcasts against our country, the minister informed the General Assembly.

Pérez Roque noted that those funds are eight times the total of supposed U.S. donations offered to the Cuban people in the wake of two recent hurricanes.

The foreign minister mentioned a November 2007 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) which recognizes that, out of the 20 sanctions programs imposed on different countries, the blockade of Cuba constitutes the most all-encompassing combination of sanctions ever imposed by the United States.

The minister said that every aspect of Cuba’s economic and social life is affected by the blockade, as is reflected in the extensive report from the UN secretary general on the issue, to which 118 countries and 22 international bodies and agencies contributed.

This ranges from the impossibility of having access to supplies and machines for cardiovascular surgery for infants or CAT scans that are essential for modern oncology, to the prosecution of U.S. citizens, with fines and prison terms, for traveling to Cuba, and even of the tourist agencies promoting such visits.

The U.S. government should explain to this Assembly why it considers Cuban children suffering from heart disease to be enemies, he stressed.

"The U.S. representatives lie to this Assembly every year when they repeat that such a blockade does not exist, that its measures are not the principal cause of the shortages and suffering that the Cuban people have had to endure over all these years and are still enduring," he added.

In that context, Pérez Roque explained that the blockade is not an exclusivly bilateral issue between Cuba and the United States. The extraterritorial application of U.S. laws and the persecution of the legitimate interests of companies and citizens of third countries who try to invest and trade with Cuba is a matter that concerns all the states meeting here, he said.

He observed that the blockade is also in flagrant violation of the rights of the U.S. people. It destroys their right to travel, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution itself.
In the last few years, he continued, the Treasury Department has intensified its strict policy of refusing licenses for religious, professional, cultural and student exchanges between the U.S. and Cuban people.

He also affirmed that the blockade impedes normal relations between Cubans resident in the United States and their families in Cuba.

After thanking on behalf of his government all those who, in one form or another, demonstrated their solidarity and support to Cuba in the wake of hurricanes Gustav and Ike, he said that, in contrast, the Washington administration responded with its habitual cynicism and hypocrisy.

He noted that the United States refused a Cuban request to purchase, via private credits, food and building materials from U.S. companies, at least for six months, in order to recover from the damages caused by the two hurricanes.

At the same time, it has attempted to orchestrate a crude propaganda campaign charging our government with not taking care of its people, he stated.

For its part, Cuba has acted in line with its traditional positions of principle. "We cannot accept supposed aid from those who have intensified the blockade, sanctions and hostilities against our people," he affirmed.

He added that despite the tremendous damage and devastation wreaked by the hurricanes, no sick person in Cuba has lacked medical care and all Cuban children and the 30,000 young people from 125 countries studying in our universities are attending classes.

The Cuban minister of foreign affairs affirmed that the blockade is the principal obstacle to the island’s economic and social development. These measures, in force for close to 50 years, are likewise obstacles to the recovery process of the Cuban people in the wake of the hurricanes.

"Like every year since 1992, we appear before the General Assembly to demand the lifting of the illegal and unjust blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba for close to 50 years.

"Seven out of every 10 Cubans have spent their entire lives under this irrational and useless policy, which is unsuccessfully attempting to bring our people to their knees," he stated.

"Highly conservative estimates reveal that the direct accumulated damage provoked by the blockade of Cuba is in excess of $93 billion. "At the current value of the dollar, that sum is equivalent to no less than $224.6 billion. It is not hard to imagine what Cuba would have achieved if we had not been subjected to this brutal economic warfare on an international scale for all these years," he added.

During the UN General Assembly debate, Antigua and Barbuda, on behalf of the Group of 77 plus China; Egypt, representing the Non-Aligned Movement; and Guyana, for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), spoke in support of the Cuban resolution, as did Venezuela, Mexico, Vietnam, China, Iran, South Africa and France.