No Law Would Push Cuba Back to Slavery, President Diaz-Canel

Cuba''s President Miguel Diaz-Canel has stressed on Saturday that neither the Helms-Burton Law of the US nor any other would push the island back to foreign domination.

'Cuba has been a sovereign nation for 60 years, and neither a law nor meddling force would push it back to slavery,' wrote the President on Twitter.

Diaz-Canel slammed the Helms-Burton Law as a complete juridical absurdity and warned that with it Washington pretends 'to steal by law what has not been able to conquer by force.'

In effect since 1996 after then president William Clinton signed it, the law openly seeks a regime change in the island, including the economic choke as a spearhead to attain it.

The law has four titles, but the third of them which has been suspended by successive presidents since the Clinton administration over periods of six months, Donald Trump decided to suspend it during only 45 days. He had applied the six-month suspension in 2017 and 2018. Title III provides for US citizens to claim what its letter calls 'confiscated property', referring properties nationalized in the wake of the triumph of the revolution.

In early March, the State Department announced a suspension for another 30 days; however it has allowed as of March 19 judicial claims against over 200 Cuban companies included in the unilateral list of economic sanctions.

The Cuban Government has rejected the latest escalation of hostility from Washington, the hardening of the blockade by the current administration and attempts to apply extraterritorial laws to hamper foreign investment coming to Cuba for its economic development.

The general director of the US Office at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, has reiterated the Helms-Burton Law is inapplicable in Cuba, and that Havana is ready to open negotiations for claimers of nationalizations consistent to the International Law be compensated.