Following President Donald Trump’s executive order, the United States is intensifying its economic war against Cuba, a collective punishment that is illegal under international humanitarian law.
This was denounced by activist Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the pacifist organization CODEPINK, in a video statement sent to Prensa Latina, in which she reacted to the decree signed on January 29 by Trump that would deprive the island of oil supplies by imposing coercive and extraterritorial tariffs on countries that sell or supply the fuel directly or indirectly.
For Benjamin, Trump is “an economic terrorist” who “has just declared a ‘national emergency’ against Cuba, absurdly labeling the small island nation an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to the United States.”
“A country of some 11 million inhabitants, besieged by US sanctions for more than six decades, a threat to the most powerful country in the world? It’s absurd. It’s the other way around,” said the writer and journalist.
She added that now, with the United States forcing Venezuela to stop supplying oil to Cuba and with Mexico under pressure, “Trump—actually, Marco Rubio—smells blood and sees this as an opportunity to finish the job, denying Cuba any source of oil.”
“What does cutting off the oil supply to a small island mean? That no hospital can function, that there is no electricity, that transportation grinds to a halt, that food doesn’t reach the markets, and that people go hungry,” she reflected.
“This isn’t abstract.” The US blockade has already left Cuba with severe fuel shortages, blackouts, and a collapsed infrastructure,” the activist emphasized, asking, “Are we really willing to starve a neighboring nation because it has a government that doesn’t bow to US pressure? Because it nationalized properties decades ago? Because Marco Rubio wants to be a hero to right-wing Cuban-Americans in Florida?”
“This is economic warfare. It is violence. It is collective punishment, which is illegal under international humanitarian law. This savage act, designed to subdue Cuba by starving its people, must be rejected by all people of goodwill around the world. Now is the time to say Enough! Lift the blockade. Let Cuba live,” she concluded.
On his Twitter account, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated that this new measure “demonstrates the fascist, criminal, and genocidal nature of a cabal that has hijacked the interests of the American people for purely personal gain.”
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, condemning the executive order signed by Trump on the internet platform itself, warned of the attempt to “impose a total blockade on fuel supplies to our country” and stressed that to justify it, “it relies on a long list of lies that seek to present Cuba as a threat that it is not.”
IMAGE CREDIT: Internet / Medea Benjamin arrested in Washington, DC
[ SOURCE: PRENSA LATINA ]
