. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .
An article from the Peoples Dispatch (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 CC BY-SA)
On Thursday, November 2, 187 nations voted for a UN General Assembly resolution to end the cruel and illegal 60 plus year US blockade on Cuba. The only states to vote against the resolution were the US and Israel. Ukraine was the only state to abstain.
(Photo: Bruno Rodríguez Padilla via X)
In their comments about the resolution, international diplomats expressed contempt at the US-imposed blockade, which causes vast suffering on the Cuba people through shortages of goods such as food and medicine. “Let us no longer allow the violations committed thus far to be tolerated with total impunity by a regime that, with its contemptuous attitude toward world opinion, has become the most isolated state in the world,” said Joaquín A. Pérez Ayestarán, the Alternate Ambassador of Venezuela to the UN, at the UNGA debate prior to the vote.
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Are economic sanctions a violation of human rights?
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“The scale of its impact is more and more harmful to the Cuban people,” said the Representative of Gabon, Ambassador Aurélie Flore Koumba Pambo. She added that the blockade is “clearly a hostile act to region and continental cohesion.”
Bruno Rodriguez, the Cuban Foreign Minister, announced this victory of the resolution, saying that it “confirms full isolation of [the] US due to its illegal, abusive & morally unsustainable policy.”
In addition to the illegal US blockade of Cuba, there is the added backdrop of the US’s funding of Israel’s genocidal policy in Gaza. Israel has been carrying out a genocidal bombardment campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, largely with United States funding. On October 31, Israel dropped six tons of US-made bombs on the Jabalya refugee camp. Israel then struck the camp for a second time the subsequent day. The number of casualties from the first and second strike has reached 195, with 120 missing and 777 injured.
The United States funds Israel to the tune of USD 4 billion each year, and is set to pass a USD 14 billion funding bill for the state in the wake of the Palestinian resistance offensive of October 7.
The US has also provided billions of dollars in funding to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on February 24, 2022.