With a resounding 186 votes in favor and only two against, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted decisively on Oct. 26 for the U.S. government to put an end to its blockade of Cuba.
Strong and unequivocal condemnation was heard by many of the countries’ representatives before votes were cast. Among them, Vietnam’s ambassador to the U.N., Le Hoai Trung, denounced the genocidal character of the blockade. Vietnam itself suffered a severe U.S. blockade for more than 20 years, after the end of the U.S. war.
Each year since 1992, the resolution, “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” has received majority support, and nearly unanimous support recently.
Only two states support the blockade against Cuba: the United States and Israel.
Three tiny islands were the only abstentions: Micronesia with 110,000 people, Palau with 20,279 people and Marshall Islands with 67,182 people. For them, abstention can be seen as defying U.S. imperialism, which holds sway over them as virtual colonies.* In 2009, Palau was the third state with the U.S. and Israel to vote against Cuba, but the last two years it has abstained with its Pacific neighbors.
In the weeks before yesterday’s U.N. vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez presented to the general assembly an extensive report of the damage and harm done to the Cuban people and economy by the U.S. blockade.
According to Cuba’s calculations, its economic losses from more than 50 years of U.S. government blockade are $975 billion, taking into account the devaluation of the dollar against gold.
Although the U.N. resolution refers to the U.S. policy as an “embargo,” the term blockade is far more accurate. The U.S. government extends its economic ban internationally, applying sanctions against other countries that try to do business with Cuba, and other forms of economic sabotage.
Cuba points out, for instance, that in 2010 the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury Dept. fined four foreign banks $502,721,671 for conducting transactions with Cuba.
In the U.N. debate, Rodriguez said: “The objectives of the blockade have been, according to the U.S. government memorandum of April 6, 1960, ‘to provoke disillusionment and discouragement through economic dissatisfaction and misery … to weaken the economic life of Cuba denying it money and supplies with the aim of reducing the salaries, provoke hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government.’
“The United States has never hidden its objective of overthrowing the revolutionary government and destroying the constitutional order that the people defends with a free will, what the ex-president George W. Bush called ‘regime change,’ and which has now reached new dimensions. Cuba made its big change in 1959. At the cost of 20,000 lives, it swept away the dictatorship of Batista, the strongman of the United States.”
He added, “Why doesn’t the government of President Obama concern itself with the problems of the United States and leave us Cubans alone to resolve calmly and peacefully ours?”
Cuba has won a moral victory in the United Nations, yet the General Assembly has no power to force the lifting of the blockade. Instead, the real power in the U.N., the Security Council, allows genocidal wars like that against Libya, while the U.S. continues to deepen Cuba’s suffering with more blockade measures.
*Although formally independent, Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia are obligated under the U.S.-imposed Compact of Free States agreements to provide U.S. military bases and testing sites, in exchange for some economic benefits. Their islands have been devastated historically by the U.S. government: Marshall Islands endured 67 nuclear bombs explosions, making it at one time the most radioactive place on earth.
