Havana. (Prensa Latina) Nearly 600 parliamentarians from 73 countries on five continents demanded that the United States remove Cuba from the unilateral list of states that Washington says sponsor terrorism.
In a joint letter, coordinated and published by the Progressive International, the legislators described the designation of the Caribbean nation by Washington as cruel and a clear violation of international law.
In the recently released letter, the signatories called on their respective governments to “take immediate measures to advocate for the elimination” of the island from the list, in the name of dignity, decency and the integrity of the Charter of the United Nations.
They point out that, according to United Nations experts, the inclusion of Cuba on that list has weakened “fundamental human rights, including the right to food, the right to health, the right to education, economic and social rights, the right to life and development.”
They also stressed that this measure against the largest of the Antilles is cruel because it is designed to maximize the suffering of its people, suffocating its economy, displacing its families and even restricting the flow of humanitarian aid.
The parliamentarians pointed out that although in May 2024 the US State Department finally removed Cuba from the list of States that do not fully cooperate in the fight against terrorism; it is still not enough because the Caribbean country “continues to suffer as a result of its cynical, cruel and illegal exclusion from the international economy.”
The US designation of state sponsor of terrorism, withdrawn in 2015 after a thorough evaluation by the Barack Obama administration, was reapplied to the Caribbean nation in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency in 2021.
The countries included in the list face extreme sanctions that make it difficult to access medicine and food.
The other three nations with the US government designation are Syria, since 1979, Iran, since 1984, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (2017).
President Joe Biden has not withdrawn the inclusion of Cuba, despite promising a return to the Obama-era policy.
