Pastors for Peace director highlights global support for Cuba

Pastors for Peace director highlights global support for Cuba
Fecha de publicación: 
9 November 2019
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The Executive Director of the Interreligious Foundation for the Community Organization/Pastors for Peace, Gail Walker, highlighted the global support Cuba enjoys today, as was recently demonstrated in the UN General Assembly.

'It was very exciting to witness in that forum how many countries, one after the other, spoke to express their support of the island in its call to end the blockade imposed by the United States for almost 60 years,' she told Prensa Latina.

Many highlighted the international solidarity that Cuba practices throughout the world, and it was very inspiring to hear all those messages, she added.

On November 7, the UN General Assembly, for the twenty-eighth consecutive occasion, approved the draft Resolution 'Necessity to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.' A total of 187 nations voted in favor of the resolution, while just three (US, Israel, Brazil) voted against, and two abstained (Colombia, Ukraine).

'Actions like these give those of us in the United States who demand an end to the blockade more strength, and inspire us to continue our efforts here, right in the belly of the beast,' Walker stressed.

It was a great day for Cuba and its just demand, she added, noted that it was clear that the majority of the nations of the world oppose the new measures of the Trump administration against the Caribbean island.

After what was done during the Barack Obama administration, which was not enough but at least was the beginning of an opening to normalize relations, now we see how Trump reverses this progress, Walker lamented.

'Although this is very frustrating,' she said, 'it shows that it is important to continue educating Americans about what the US blockade represents, and to encourage them to go to Cuba and learn about the country for themselves.'

We must put an end to the myth that Cuba is everything that the United States government claims it is, that describes it as a country without freedoms. That is why it is so important to visit the island and learn about its reality, she stressed.

The Pastors for Peace director referred to the moves by Washington to prevent this, including the prohibition on US citizens freely traveling to Cuba as tourists, and the latest ban on US flights to the island, except to Havana, which also hit the Cuban community in the States very hard, she noted.

Such moves provide us with more reasons to continue to encourage people to take action with the aim of changing our government's policies, she added.

Walker also criticized the hypocrisy of the Trump administration, which tightens its blockade against Cuba and does so in the name, supposedly, of human rights.

'This government violates the human rights of women, Black people, migrants,' she stressed. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez spoke of this hypocrisy at the UN General Assembly, she recalled.

After Cuba's recent victory at the UN, solidarity groups and civil society representatives gathered at the headquarters of the island's mission to the United Nations to express their support.

In addition to bringing humanitarian aid to Cuba since the early 1990s, the annual Pastors for Peace caravans, under the guidance of the late Reverend Lucius Walker, emerged with the objective of challenging the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States.

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