Over 400 noted public figures including activists, politicians, artists, intellectuals, ex-heads of state, scientists have made a public appeal to the USA President Joe Biden to take a ‘new path forward’ and lift Donald Trump’s 243 unilateral and additional sanctions on Cuba. The appeal titled ‘Let Cuba Live‘ was published in The New York Times on Friday.
The signed letter said that the cruel policies measures deliberately put in place by the Trump regime in the face of a pandemic have resulted in worsening the effect of the crisis on the people who are now facing shortages of medicine and food in the island nation.
‘We find it unconscionable, especially during a pandemic, to intentionally block remittances and Cuba’s use of global financial institutions, given that access to dollars is necessary for the importation of food and medicine,’ the letter read.
The Biden administration has imposed new sanctions on Cuba’s defense minister and the Interior Ministry,
A day before the letter was released the Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Cuban security minister and an interior ministry special forces unit for alleged human rights violations of people protesting against the Cuban government.
‘The United States will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people,’ Biden said without clarifying that the Cubans were protesting to end the shortage of food, medicine, and other daily necessities which has been largely caused by the US Embargo.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, in a message on Twitter, rejected the sanctions as ‘unfounded and slanderous’ and urged the United States to apply such measures to its own record of ‘daily repression and policy brutality,’ Reuters reported.
A total of 184 countries on Wednesday voted in favour of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row, with the United States and Israel voting against it.
In addition, seven UN Special Rapporteurs wrote a letter to the U.S. government in April 2020 regarding the sanctions on Cuba. ‘In the pandemic emergency,’ they wrote, ‘the lack of will of the U.S. government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of suffering in Cuba.’
Also read: How Cuba is saving the world during COVID-19 pandemic?
