The Cuban government will study the most recent U.S. measures and, if they do not violate national legislation and mean an opening that benefits the Cuban population, even if only a segment, it will not hinder their implementation
Photo: Cubaminrex
On May 28, the U.S. Government finally announced a set of measures to put into effect its May 16, 2022 announcements. The objective of this step, according to the text published by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), is to favor the private sector in Cuba.
The measures are limited and do not touch the fundamental body of the blockade against Cuba nor the additional sanctions that make up the policy of maximum pressure. Once again, the US government’s decision is based on its own distorted vision of the Cuban reality, by artificially separating the private sector from the public sector, when both are part of the Cuban business system and of society as a whole.
With this announcement, the U.S. Government intends to target only one segment of our population. It does not eliminate or modify the coercive measures that today most affect the Cuban economy and public services and that severely damage the well-being of our entire population.
If the announced measures are implemented, the United States seeks to put the private sector, which has been legally established and has grown under the measures taken in a sovereign act by the Cuban Government in consultation with the Cuban people, at an advantage. The same has happened with Internet access established and expanded by Cuba despite the obstacles of the blockade and restrictions to prevent free access to hundreds of tools and websites.
The U.S. government has been explicit in its intention to use this sector for political purposes against the Revolution, depending on its regime change objectives.
Even if this is a capricious selectivity, both the public and private sectors will continue to suffer the consequences of the blockade and the absurd inclusion of Cuba in the list of States that allegedly sponsor terrorism.
The coercive measures that make up the economic blockade will remain in force with cruel effect on the entire Cuban population. It is evident that the U.S. ratifies its will to punish Cuba’s state sector, knowing that it provides essential services such as education, health, culture, sports and others to all Cubans, including the private sector; and that it is the guarantee of social justice and equity among citizens. For this reason, recent measures were taken by the U.S. Government to persecute Cuba’s international medical cooperation and documents have been published that reveal that it is continuing its efforts to deprive us of income and destabilize the country for political purposes of domination.
The Cuban Government will study these measures and, if they do not violate national legislation and mean an opening that benefits the Cuban population, even if only a segment, it will not hinder their implementation.
Havana, May 28, 2024
An idea as noble as the Refugee Olympic Team cannot fall prey to manipulation
Today, the IOC, and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, are mixing oil with vinegar. To put it more clearly, they are complicit in the aggressive and criminal policy of the United States against Cuba
Demographic trends, armed conflicts, natural disasters, structural inadequacies of development, inequalities in national economies, conditions of poverty in broad sectors, inequities of an unjust and predatory world order, lack of job opportunities and, in general, the growing gap between poverty and wealth, stimulate the mobility of human beings.
I take up again the quote of Dr. Antonio Díaz Aja, director of the Center for Demographic Studies of the University of Havana, which I used a few years ago in a similar context, because, as he stated, “migratory dysfunctionality is a product of the basic contradictions of the world we live in”. Sport is no exception, it has become a means to extirpate the South of its best children; that is why many of the sending geographies were former colonies of today’s receiving ones.
Until April 2019, in football, Brazil, with 1 330 players, was the most exporting country, with presence in 147 tournaments. Argentina had more than 800 players in the English and Italian leagues. In the MLB that season, there were 256 players who were not born in the United States (28%), and 228 of them were Latin American. In basketball, the NBA had 116 players of other nationalities.
A study by the University of Maryland showed that in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games, more than 300 migrants won medals, or were part of a team that won medals. In the Pyeongchang-2018 Winter Olympics, 178 athletes participated for countries where they were not born.
Cuba has already had Olympic champions under a flag that is not its own, such as Pedro Pablo Pichardo, in Tokyo-2020, in the triple jump; in Paris-2024, the now Portuguese will have as rival his fellow countryman Andy Diaz, now Spanish. In 2016, we saw Osmani Juantorena in the Italian volleyball sextet, and in July the same will happen with the “Pole” Wilfredo Leon. In the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile, there were several duels between Cubans representing their homeland and those representing another.
But the “story” of the Cubans on the world sports map is longer. Athletes from the largest of the Antilles have been victims of the crime of human trafficking; there are countless examples of baseball players who have been, and still are, victims of this scourge. Discrediting campaigns and incitement to desertion of delegations have been organized, also through crime, in the venues of multisport events, such as Central American (Ponce-1993), Pan American (Indianapolis-1987 and Winnipeg-1999) and Olympic (Rio de Janeiro-2016), without the International Olympic Committee (IOC) showing any ethical stance.
Today, the IOC, and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, are mixing oil with vinegar. To put it more clearly, they are making themselves accomplices of the aggressive and criminal policy of the United States against Cuba, which has used the theft of talent and organized irregular migration – with all its human cost on top, because life does not interest them -, with the aim of discrediting it, attacking one of its great conquests: its sports movement.
Since 2016, the IOC, in a beautiful and humane initiative, created the Olympic Refugee Team (EOR). The first retinue participated in the Games of that year, in Rio de Janeiro; the second, in Tokyo-2020, and Paris will host the third. It is a delegation made up basically of young people uprooted by war or persecuted for reasons of ethnicity, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinions.
For more than 75 years, the Palestinian people have been victims of this persecution, violence and death. What is happening in Gaza today is happening in full view of the world, and the displaced people in Rafah make up half of the population of that region. But in none of the three editions has a Palestinian been in the EOR.
In the three rosters, including the one that will participate in the French capital, there are 75 athletes; 58 of them, 77%, reside in countries of the developed world. Of those who will go to the City of Light, only three live in underdeveloped nations.
Then, the presence of two Cuban athletes in the EOR is not serious, because it is based on a lie: Fernando Dayán Jorge, Olympic champion in Tokyo-2020, in canoeing, and Ramiro Mora Romero, in weightlifting.
Can one be a refugee, according to the concept of the United Nations, and be an Olympic, World, Pan-American and Central American and Caribbean champion, at only 22 years of age? Can one achieve that being a persecuted or uprooted by war? The IOC and the UNHCR are wrong or lend themselves to the farce against Cuba, which defends the Olympic Refugee Team, because it should be an expression of peace through sport, one of the noblest ideas in the face of the injustice that these people live.
Cuba has not claimed the presence of its nationals with other delegations, when they comply with the provisions of the Olympic Charter. But not only that, it has helped, as it has just done with the Chilean wrestling team, the preparation of those who were born in its entrails and now compete for that geography, as the gladiator Yasmani Acosta. Cuba proudly receives the dedication of those who live abroad and wear the national jersey, as did the baseball Team Asere.
What it does not accept, and that is why it denounces it, is manipulation. We Cubans are not surprised that campaigns against our country are fed, but the fact that the International Olympic Committee and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees appear in these dirty maneuvers is outrageous.
It is not Cuba that uses sports as politics, it is the empire defeated for 65 years that resents that, after wanting to starve it to death, to leave it without fuel, to speculate with its finances against an entire people, a black man like Mijaín López, or one like Idalys Ortiz rises to the top of the podium, reserved for the rich world, for those who exploit.
The Olympic Charter states that: “As sport is an activity that is part of society, sports organizations within the Olympic Movement must apply the principle of political neutrality”. But this is the most violated precept.
While asking for respect and peace, the United States denies genocide
Cuba demanded at the UN not to remain inert in the face of the massacre in progress
Photo: Artwork by Michel Moro
Although the International Criminal Court (ICC) had to “lump together” the Zionist government of Israel and the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, in order to propose a detention agreement to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, for the genocide being committed in Gaza against the Palestinian population, the ruling clashed with the position of the United States, which does ñnot allow any sanction against Israel.
The reaction, both from President Joe Biden and á of State Antony Blinken, and even within the U.S. Congress, has surpassed everything imaginable: U.S. sanctions against the ICC itself, for seeking to act against Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense.
The U.S. president described as “outrageous” the request of the prosecutor of the international justice entity, Karim Khan, for issuing the arrest warrants.
“And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor may imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel,” said the U.S. president, while denying that genocide is being committed in Gaza.
The U.S. Congress, for its part, is promoting bipartisan legislation that would impose sanctions on anyone involved in the case of the arrest warrants.
In light of this situation, the Attorney General of the Hague Court has warned that threats against him and his institution constitute a criminal offense, after receiving a threatening letter from Republican and Democratic members of the U.S. Congress.
While the incumbent occupant of the White House reaffirms his position on the side of the massacre, Cuba, like most countries, demands respect for Palestinian civilians caught in the conflict by demanding that the UN Security Council fulfill its mandate for peace, Cubaminrex reported.
The island’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ernesto Soberón, called on the 15-member body not to remain inert in the face of the ongoing massacre, and on the international community not to stop its call to halt the Israeli offensive.
The deputy director general of the U.S. Directorate of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Johana Tablada, described as genocidal the inclusion of Cuba in the unilateral list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism
Photo: Prensa Latina
The deputy director general of the U.S. Directorate of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Johana Tablada, described as genocidal the inclusion of Cuba in the unilateral list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.
In an interview granted to the Cuban News Channel, the diplomat explained that the recent exclusion of the island from a list of nations that “do not fully cooperate in the fight against terrorism” does not mean its elimination from the general list of the State Department that imposes measures against this Caribbean country.
That unilateral measure constitutes one of the main genocidal tools of the White House to asphyxiate the Cuban people, and it persists, in spite of the fact that more and more voices are being raised against such injustice, she pointed out.
She affirmed that Washington uses the presence of Cuba in such a list as a justification for the unilateral coercive measures derived from them, which are associated with the purpose of asphyxiating the Island’s economy and holding the Government responsible for their impact.
She also pointed out that the U.S. Executive is simultaneously promoting a well-financed systematic communicational operation, in the mainstream press and digital platforms, to hold the victim country responsible for the impact of these inhumane measures, which significantly affect the population.
