District of Columbia Council demands end to US blockade against Cuba

Washington, Feb 21 (Prensa Latina) Some members of the Council of the District of Columbia, in the United States, submitted a resolution that calls for an end to the blockade against Cuba, a long-standing policy that today causes unjustified damage to the Cuban people.

The document also calls to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

The resolution, which may be cited as ‘Sense of the Council on the Restoration of American Cuban Relations Resolution of 2023’, recalled that since 1962 the United States has imposed an economic, commercial and financial blockade on Cuba.

It adds that in the last stage of the Barack Obama Government (2009-2017) the two countries’ presidents began work to reestablish relations between the United States and Cuba.

However, with the arrival of the Donald Trump administration (2017-2021), 243 new sanctions were subsequently adopted, ‘including restrictions on Cuban Americans who send remittances to families and businesses in Cuba,’ it stresses.

The resolution emphasizes that Trump, almost at the end of his term in January 2021, “reincluded Cuba on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.”

It notes that under the current Joe Biden administration, some travel restrictions were partially lifted, “but a lot of limitations remain.”

‘An example of the damage that the embargo (blockade) has caused to Cuba is the shortage of vital medical equipment, and humanitarian aid after catastrophic events, such as hurricanes, is often hampered by these harmful policies,’ the resolution says.

The United States has the power to improve challenges like these by lifting the threat of sanctions against third parties, which shows the extraterritoriality of the blockade, as Cuba has repeatedly denounced.

At the same time, Cuba also lacks access to many technological services, as certain smartphone applications, networks and online services are inaccessible from the island, the resolutions points out.

So far, the UN General Assembly has voted 30 times to condemn the blockade, in the most recent, only the United States and Israel voted against the resolution, which is in stark contrast to the 185 countries that were in favor, it stresses.

In the United States, city councils, state legislatures, school boards, labor councils, unions and other organizations have passed approximately 67 resolutions urging an end to that unilateral siege, the document warned.

These pronouncements also request to promote scientific cooperation, and pressure the federal government to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

‘The power resides in President Biden to remove Cuba from the list and begin to normalize relations between our countries,’ it emphasizes.

In this sense, the Council considered that Biden and Congress “must take all necessary measures to end all aspects of the blockade imposed against Cuba by the United States” and remove it “from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list due to the unfair damage that it causes the Cuban people’.