A rogue nation stands alone - 185 to 3
On Wednesday the United Nations General Assembly voted virtually unanimously, by 185 votes of the 192 member states, in favor of Cuba's resolution to end the U.S. blockade against the Cuban people. Albania, which last year abstained, joined in this year, to oppose the blockade. This time only two member states, Israel and Palau, voted with the United States. Two member states abstained, Marshall Islands and Micronesia. The republics of Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia are protectorates of the United States.
The United States government has ignored this mandate and flagrantly violated the almost unanimous will of the international community. And it does this without any regard for the law, reason and ethics but rather by virtue of its power, inmorality and arrogance.
This year is the 17th consecutive time since 1992 that the General Assembly, highest body of the UN, has voted by an overwhelming majority on resolutions opposed to the blockade that the United States has maintained for 48 years against the Cuban people.
In conformity with that General Assembly resolution of Oct. 2007, last July Cuba presented to the UN Secretary General a report titled, "The need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba." It is the basis of the resolution that was approved yesterday.
The Cuban government details in the report the damaging effect of the U.S. blockade on the life of the Cuban people. The blockade policy is not only in violation of the proposals and principles of the UN Charter, but as the report makes clear in its first page, "By its officially declared as well as hidden objectives, by its reach and the means and actions carried out to achieve them, the blockade by the United States against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide, by the stipulations of the Geneva Convention for the Prevention and Sanctions for the Crime of Genocide of 1948, and as an act of economic warfare, according to the Naval Conference of London of 1909." International treaties are the cornerstone of International Law with respect to human rights and relations between states.
And if by chance anyone has forgotten, the report reminds us that, "As of December 2007--by conservative calculations, the economic, commercial and financial blockade by the United States against Cuba has caused economic losses to the country estimated at more than $93 billion dollars." "By the current value of the dollar," as Cuba's foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque affirmed yesterday in the General Assembly, that figure rises to no less than $224.6 billion dollars."
The vindictive cruelty of the enemies of the Cuban people--those who criminally try to force it to surrender its independence by hunger and illness--reaches such levels that by the Blockade's regulations and laws it prohibits companies of third countries, I repeat third countries, from selling products or services to Cuba that contain more than 10% of U.S. components. This is even if the owners are from those third countries.
The virtually unanimous rejection of the blockade's genocidal policy by the international community, as demonstrated by this most recent vote of the UN General Assembly, is a clear demand for the U.S. government to respect international legality and put an end to the unilateral criminal policy.
> Secretary General's Report
> Overwhelming International Rejection of US Blockade of Cuba at UN
> Cuba expects new US president to lift embargo
