US Blockade Has Caused Cuba More Than $1 Billion in Damage

President Obama has every reason to lift the siege against the island. This coercive, illegal and obsolete instrument typical of the Cold War doesn’t work for Washington in its intentions of promoting a new strategy of “regime change” here. Cuba will not renounce its independence, its sovereignty nor its development, maintained Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla

The economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the U.S. against Cuba over the course of 50 years until Dec. 2011 has led to over $1 trillion in damage. That takes into account the depreciation of the currency against the value of gold on the international market, reported Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla this Thursday at a videoconference that connected the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry with the Permanent Mission of Cuba before the United Nations in New York.

The figures for the amount of damage to Cuba for economic harm because of this policy, besides its impact on other areas of our society, are collected in Cuba’s report about the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 66/6 fittingly titled “Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Embargo Imposed by the United States of America Against Cuba,” which was presented by Rodriguez Parrilla during his conference. He met up with journalists in Havana from 14 national and 36 foreign media [outlets].

For a small economy like that of Cuba, it is an overwhelming burden, the foreign minister pointed out.

The minister expressed his trust that once more the international community will denounce this coercive measure and demand its repeal. [It would be like what] happened last year, when 186 members of the General Assembly voted in favor of the Cuban resolution, leaving the U.S. and its ally Israel alone and isolated.

The minister emphasized that soon the condemnation will be highlighted in a high-level session of the General Assembly, where, like in prior years, the heads of state and of government and ministers of foreign affairs will demand the abolition of the blockade, a subject that he said is among the five most discussed in that forum.

Despite this international call, the U.S. has responded by tightening the blockade, maintained Rodriguez, who referred to the comprehensive application of this policy through President Barack Obama’s administration.

In 2012, the U.S. government increased the harassment and the persecution of Cuba’s business and financial operations everywhere, including those that were made in currency other than the dollar. It also widened its sanctions and fines to the entities or individuals of Third World countries that have links to the island, emphasizing the extraterritorial nature of the blockade, the minister said.

Rodriguez Parrilla added some examples. In 2011, the fines from the Office of Foreign Assets Control were $89 million, and so far in 2012, it has already climbed to $622 million.

During Obama’s administration, the fines grew to some $2.26 billion.

Among other cases of extraterritoriality of this hostile policy, in Dec. 2011 the Cuban foreign minister rejected the protection of Trinidad and Tobago’s Hilton Hotel, which was administered by the North American company Hilton Worldwide under contract. He received “strict orders” from the Office of Foreign Assets Control that it does not allow in its facilities the celebration of the Cuba-Caricom Summit just days before the event. He pronounced it “a real scandal and act of disrespect to the Caribbean nations and the international community.”

Blockade to Life

The report on U.N. General Assembly Resolution 66/6 that will be submitted to a vote by the member states of that international authority in November detailed examples that make evident the criminal effect of the network of laws and measures that make up this policy of encirclement.

The human damage is invaluable, and the blockade causes suffering, shortages and difficulties that reach every Cuban family, commented Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, referring to the consequences of that policy on access to raw materials, food and medicine; these acts are prohibited by humanitarian conventions, even in times of war.

The foreign minister emphasized that the William Soler Pediatric Cardiology Center does not have the medication levosimendan, a treatment for low cardiac output, which is only produced in the U.S. by Abbott Laboratories.

According to the minister, the Cuban institution can’t gain access to nutritional supplements for parenteral use that are required for children to undergo a surgery that would give them the best prognosis.

According to the report, which was distributed to national and foreign press at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they serve between 100 and 110 infants younger than one year annually in the cardiovascular surgery department of that hospital. More than 90 percent require the parenteral nutritional intervention.

Rodriguez Parrilla also referred to the withdrawal of the U.S. company St. Jude, which deprived the Institute of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery of the three-dimensional, non-fluoroscopic anatomical mapping equipment necessary for performing removals of complex arrhythmias. For this reason, Cuba has to send patients to Third World countries for treatment.

As a result of this blockade, a Canadian intermediary company canceled the sales contract that it had signed with Medicuba, a medicine importing company, for the acquisition kits (HIV-1P24 ELISA) of North American manufacture that allow the diagnosis of AIDS in children of HIV-positive mothers.

“It is a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of human rights. Without a doubt, it is the main cause of the economic problems and the primary obstacle for the development of the nation in all respects” said Rodriguez Parrilla, who reminded that this policy is also classified as an act of genocide according to the Geneva Convention of 1948.

Reasons That Washington Did Not Listen

Rodriguez Parrilla also catalogued as unsustainable and slanderous Cuba’s presence on the so-called list of state sponsors of international terrorism issued by the U.S. government.

He warned that this measure has a “deliberate political nature” and that the text is testimony, fulfilling his “illegitimate purpose” of using this list as a pretext for “applying additional blockade measures in the financial sector.”

He also criticized Obama’s extension of the Trading with the Enemy Act, which maintains the application of blockade measures, considering how the president argued that it is best for the national interests of his country.

“It isn’t true. The United States has a lot of reasons for lifting the blockade,” the foreign minister said.

According to the minister, repealing this siege would allow the U.S. “to re-establishing its own legality,” “to stick to international law” and to eliminate “a burden of credibility on its foreign policy.”

It also would help him improve “his position and international image with the cessation of the application of measures against the sovereignty of third states, including its allies,” he said.

According to the minister, the elimination of the blockade also suits the interests of American citizens and specified that to prohibit North American citizens from traveling to Cuba is a “violation of the civil liberties and constitutional rights.” This is one of the subjects that provokes much aversion in North American society, the majority of which “opposes the blockade” and “favors the normalization of relations with Cuba.”

U.S. citizens need special licenses from the Treasury Department in order to travel to the island. Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla reported that the Office of Foreign Assets Control withholds this type of permission — that it grants by virtue of that which the U.S. has been called “people-to-people contact” — and in accordance with the 2009 stipulation in the country.

Among other reasons, the minister recounted moreover that lifting the blockade would allow Washington “to articulate a new, credible policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean,” whose countries have expressed “unanimously and decisively” their opposition to those measures that prevent the establishment of appropriate relationships between the region and the North American power.

Cuba Will Not Give up Its Sovereignty

Rodriguez Parrilla assured that Obama has all the constitutional powers that would permit him to introduce substantial modifications to the application of what he named an “instrument of abuse of power.” For this reason, he said the president might not have a “need for making legislative decisions.”

He said that this “coercive, illegal and obsolete instrument typical of the Cold War” does not work for the government in Washington to “advance in its own goal of changing the regime of in our country.”

Therefore, he assured that Obama “has all the moral, humanitarian, political and legal reasons, and it respects the interests and desires of the North American people to lift [the blockade] tomorrow.”

He guaranteed that “if he did not want to do it,” regardless of who will be the next president of the U.S. among the candidates who are now competing for the White House, he will have the opportunity to abolish this policy in the next term of office.

“While Cuba will continue to develop on the economic and social plane, it will continue to make a difficult endeavor that needs the contribution and hard work of all Cubans, but it will neither abandon its independence, its sovereignty nor its development,” he emphasized.