Originally published in the March 2016 issue of Liberation Newspaper.
Note: A major aspect of U.S. strategy in Latin America has been to weaken the unity of progressive and revolutionary governments in the region. A top priority for Washington is to roll back, and eventually overthrow, the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela. The following statement was issued by Cuba on March 4, 2016, demonstrating unwavering solidarity with Venezuela during this difficult time. It was translated by Liberation.
The President of the United States of America has decided to extend for one year the arbitrary and aggressive Executive Order 13692 signed on March 8, 2015 that declared a “national emergency” on the basis that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
The pretext for this decision was that “the situation in Venezuela, described in Executive Order 13692, has not improved” and then it continues to reiterate the familiar allegations about supposed violations of human rights, persecution and arbitrary arrests of political opponents, restrictions on the freedom of the press, among others, attributed to the Venezuelan government.
This new unjustified action against a peaceful and supportive sister nation of Our America ignores the indignation and rejection raised in the Seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama against the enactment of this extraordinary order. This shows that the intervention in the internal affairs of the Venezuelan people has not changed and that the aim of overthrowing the Bolivarian Revolution remains in force.
The Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba demands the elimination of Executive Order 13692 and reiterates, with resoluteness and loyalty, our unconditional support and that of our people to the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, to the legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro and to the civic-military unity of the Bolivarian people, who are struggling to maintain peace, constitutional order and the conquests of the Revolution, against the destabilization efforts of the internal opposition, animated by the results of the legislative elections that give the lie to the fallacious arguments used to extend the executive order.
We call on the governments and peoples of our region to demand that the principles of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed in January 2014 by the heads of state and government at the Second Summit of the CELAC held in Havana, be respected.
