Cuba, Blockade and Human Rights.

The U.S. ambition to dominate Cuba, and even to annex it, dates back to the last century and was defended as state policy by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams. Cuba was considered as «the ripe fruit» which, due to its geographic proximity, should eventually fall into the hands of the U.S. This is the Yankee geopolitics that still prevails today and which sees Cuba as its southern frontier.

Recently, an international tribunal which for two days in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, analyzed the U.S. blockade against Cuba, ruled that this policy violates international law and universal norms for peaceful coexistence.

It also stressed that the economic, commercial and financial siege imposed by Washington violates the UN Charter, which enshrines the sovereignty of countries; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and agreements of the World Trade Organization, among other norms.

After hearing the arguments of the Prosecutor’s Office and the testimony of witnesses on the human and economic damage caused by the blockade, the court recalled that the United States has been applying this unilateral system of coercive measures for more than 60 years, affecting the living conditions of an entire people, its development and the performance of the various sectors of society.

Likewise, the decision of the magistrates reflected the extraterritorial scope of the blockade, contrary to International Law, the unacceptability of the siege and its intensification with the inclusion of the island on the list of countries presumed to be sponsors of terrorism.

The report read by the judges, headed by the German jurist Norman Peach, also pointed out that the blockade violates the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966.

In another of its essential points, the sentence issued appealed to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the possibility that Washington’s hostility and its determination to cause systematic collective harm could be linked to this crime.

Written by Osvaldo M Álvarez Torres PhD in Political Science. Consulting Professor