Illegal occupation of Cuban territory by the U.S. recalled

Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez today recalled the occupation by the United States in 1903 of the territory of Guantanamo (east), where it maintains a naval base.

In his profile on the social network X, the top representative of the island’s diplomacy affirmed that 121 years ago, that northern power usurped 117 square kilometers of Cuban soil, which it illegally maintains against the will of the nation.

He pointed out in his message that at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. government has tortured, with impunity, and systematically violated the human rights of its prisoners.

Last February 16, President Miguel Díaz-Canel recalled in X that the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Raúl Castro, defined the base as “a dagger stuck in the side of the homeland; a dagger that we will remove peacefully, in a civilized manner and by enforcing the principles of international law”.

On that day in 1903, the presidents of Cuba, Tomás Estrada Palma, and of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, signed an agreement through which they ceded the portion of land located in the eastern province of Guantánamo, “for the necessary time and for a naval station and a coal station”.

Such fact had as antecedent, the Platt Amendment, imposed on the Cubans in their first Republican Constitution during the American military occupation, which allowed the United States to establish coaling or naval stations.

The agreement was made under the U.S. threat of military intervention on the island, which is why experts consider it illegal, in light of the provisions of the United Nations Declaration on Military, Political or Economic Coercion in the Conclusion of Treaties.

Since its creation, the U.S. base has been the spearhead of aggressions against Latin American nations, as well as provocations against Cuba since 1959.

Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York, the United States decided to open a detention center there, which it maintains despite allegations of atrocious human rights violations against prisoners.