An Act of Genocide for which Obama Must Answer

Last year, a historic milestone of votes against the longest economic war in history was reached; 188 of the 192 members of the U.N. voted against the blockade on Cuba. This year, things will be similar.

How do you explain the fact that the condemnation is already a virtually unanimous decision of the U.N. member states that leaves the blocker isolated?

Simple: There is no bilateral embargo, as Washington cynically states. It is an extraterritorial blockade that severely damages Cuba’s international economic relations through threats and millions of dollars of fines to third parties. It therefore violates the sovereignty of the U.N. member states and of their right to trade freely. It is an extremely serious attack on international law and the United Nations Charter that affects vital interests of their closest allies and even those of U.S. businessmen suffocated by the financial crisis.

But it is equally simple for another reason, from a legal and ethical point of view. The blockade violates international law by being a typically genocidal measure, according to the definition of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which refers to acts perpetrated with intent to destroy, entirely or partially, a national ethnic, racial or religious group as such.

The blockade is part of a policy of state terror that launched an invasion on the island in 1961 with the support of the Pentagon and the CIA and throughout decades: 681 terrorist actions, which have claimed the lives of 3,047 people and left more than 2,000 handicapped. But in 1962, Washington was already preparing its armed forces to lead a direct invasion on Cuba, frustrated by the missile crisis.

That would be enough to label its policy toward Cuba as genocide, but the genocidal character of the blockade has been expressed in other repeated criminal facts for more than half a century, such as the daily fatalities of Cubans of all ages due to a lack of drugs or oncological, cardiac and, in general, high-tech facilities — like certain types of stents used in pediatric cardiology — which the United States refuses to sell to Cuba, even although it knows it is the only manufacturer. But the blockade is much broader than these scandalously tragic examples. It has inflicted severe damage on millions of people in daily life for more than half a century. The blockade demanded a degree of imagination and a superhuman effort to substitute overnight, with sheer inventiveness, American spare parts and consumable goods of agricultural, industrial and services equipment and, subsequently, a move in record time to other technologies. Cuba has been subjected to an experience that would pose a very high economic and human cost for any country, let alone a poor and underdeveloped one.

It can be categorically stated that the Yankee economic war measures began in Jan. 1959, when Washington gave a hero’s welcome to officials of the Batista dictatorship that were burdened with the island’s national treasure, valued at more than $400 million at that time. With that monumental robbing of Cuba’s people, the great economic power of the counterrevolution began to brew and emigrated to Miami; that very year, the United States deprived Cuba of its sugar quota.

As early as April 6, 1960, a memorandum of the U.S. Department of State expressed the genocidal objective of the blockade with unmatched eloquence: “The only means foreseeable to alienate internal support is through disenchantment and despondency […] must be used soon any means conceivable to weaken Cuba’s economic life […] in order to cause hunger, desperation and to overthrow the government.”

Foreign ships that dock at Cuban ports are forbidden to enter the United States for 180 days; the products of any country that contain more than 10 percent Cuban components cannot be sold on the American market; manufacturers of products that contain more than 10 percent of U.S. components are forbidden from selling them to Cuba. Even U.N. child health care programs are affected on the island, since Washington does not allow their funds to be used to acquire critical medicines and technology made in the U.S.

Obama has the power to dismantle a fair amount of the blockade, but he has done nothing — nor will he, seemingly.