One week after its signing, condemnations continue to pour in against the executive order issued by US President Donald Trump, which attempts to deprive the island of oil supplies, thus cruelly reinforcing the blockade.
For activist Víctor Coronado, a member of the Hands Off Cuba Committee, New Jersey chapter, “the objective is clear: to subdue the Cuban people through hunger, foment dissent, and try to destroy the Cuban Revolution.”
On January 29, President Trump signed the decree, which labels Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” and declared a national emergency to impose a new blockade, cutting off the island’s access to foreign oil, Coronado told Prensa Latina.
The order states that Cuba “directly threatens the security, national security, and foreign policy of the United States,” accusing it of collaborating with terrorists and violating human rights; however, none of this is true, he emphasized.
“First of all, Cuba does not represent any existential threat to the United States, nor has it ever. Suggesting otherwise is similar to when Latin American parents scare their children with the bogeyman to make them behave,” he added.
This administration, like previous ones, is inventing an enemy to make the American people fear it, the activist said.
He commented that “in reality, Cuba has never declared war on the United States, nor has it financed media outlets to influence American public opinion, nor has it attempted to harm the U.S. economy.”
On the contrary, “the United States has done all this and more against Cuba since the Bay of Pigs invasion (Playa Girón) in April 1961—which resulted in the first major defeat and the assassination attempts against Fidel Castro—up to the current blockade and the taxpayer-funded propaganda outlets.”
Then there is the accusation, he added, of collaborating with terrorists. “It’s ridiculous, and the international community doesn’t believe it. Cuba is a signatory to all the main United Nations instruments against terrorism, has systematically denounced terrorism worldwide, and has even cooperated with the United States in the fight against terrorism,” Coronado noted.
He recalled that, meanwhile, on U.S. soil, “they have given refuge to known anti-Cuban terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who died peacefully in Miami without justice being served, and have allowed counterrevolutionary terrorist groups to operate from that South Florida city for decades.”
The accusation of human rights violations “ignores what the Cuban Revolution actually provides: the right to housing, education, healthcare, public safety, and a dignified life,” he pointed out.
It is astonishing and ironic, he opined, the way the United States accuses Cuba, when here there are “more than 770,000 homeless citizens, no universal healthcare, the largest prison population and rate in the world, and it is the only nation that has used nuclear weapons, twice.”
I believe, he argued, that historically the United States has maintained “a near-permanent state of war, overthrows governments, supports dictators, and sponsors death squads throughout Latin America. And yet it believes it has the moral authority to judge Cuba and accuse it of human rights violations? Unbelievable!”
Coronado believes the Trump administration “openly defies international law, as seen in the January 3, 2016, attacks against Venezuela—which resulted in the deaths of 32 Cuban citizens—and in statements by officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who declared, ‘I don’t care what the United Nations says.’”
Trump himself acts as if his only limit is his own judgment, noted the activist, who was born in the United States to Dominican parents.
“By reviving the Monroe Doctrine — now they want to call it the Donroe Doctrine — this administration seeks nothing less than the recolonization of our hemisphere, and the threats against Cuba fit perfectly into that imperial strategy,” he asserted.
Cuba has repeatedly expressed its willingness to resolve disputes through dialogue, with mutual respect and on equal terms, Coronado warned, insisting that “the international community must do more to curb U.S. imperialism, because peace must always be the option.”
[ SOURCE: PRENSA LATINA ]
