Since 1989, the Peace Boat Cruise visited Cuba 19 times until June 2019, when the Japan-based NGO Peace Boat lamented its inability to dock in Havana due to new restrictions imposed by the United States blockade against the island. This was expressed in a statement delivered in Havana to the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).
This is how this current of love and solidarity, which has carried the message of peace, social justice, and environmental preservation to more than one hundred countries, was attacked.
The historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, received hibakusha (survivors of the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and passengers who traveled on the ship in 2010 and 2012. In that last meeting, before more than 600 participants, he asserted:
“The world’s current problems are a matter of the survival of the species. Peace with nuclear weapons is inconceivable. It is a battle we are obligated to win; we must educate the masses about the reality of life…
The dropping of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was intentional, an accident occurred in Chernobyl, and if we continue to investigate, we will learn the effects of nuclear testing…”
The Peace Cruise visits were meticulously coordinated by ICAP, the institution that assumed the country’s representation on the World Peace Council (WPC), as it is the coordinator of the organization for the Americas and the Caribbean.
In Cuba, International Seminars for Peace and the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases are organized, based in Guantánamo province, where an illegal U.S. naval base is located, remaining on Cuban territory against the will of the people.
Participants in the sessions condemn this naval enclave, as well as foreign military bases in all territories, because they violate sovereignty and threaten peace.
The Institute and the International Solidarity Movement with Cuba dedicate their efforts to supporting just causes, the aspirations and rights of peoples, and international peace.
They have carried out actions condemning the Zionists and their genocidal policy of exterminating the Palestinian people and the U.S. naval military deployment in the Caribbean; in defense of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace; and in firm support of the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and the Sahrawi people.
The island promotes a dignified peace that respects the inalienable right of peoples to their independence, sovereignty, and self-determination, and that entails supporting processes and movements that fight for these aspirations.
[ SOURCE: AGENCIA CUBANA DE NOTICIAS ]
