Fidel Castro’s sin is rejecting US hegemony

Nov 06, 2002

It is again the time of the year when the United Nation's General Assembly meets to pass resolution on America's 40 years of blockade against Cuba. America imposed sanctions on the country since its successful revolution in 1959 that threw out the corrupt

Tajudeen’s Thursday Post card

It is again the time of the year when the United Nation's General Assembly meets to pass resolution on America's 40 years of blockade against Cuba.

America imposed sanctions on the country since its successful revolution in 1959 that threw out the corrupt dictatorship of Batista. He was an American poodle, like successive regimes in that country (since its independence from the US in 1902) that used to be known as the “playground of the Western world”.

The partial blockade against Cuba (from 1959) became total blockade on Feb 7, 1962 when President John F. Kennedy took formal steps to comply with the order given to him by the Congress through Section 620A of the Foreign Aid Act of September 1961.

Successive U.S. regimes have generally sought to tighten the noose further on Cuba though there have been periods of apparent relaxation especially under President Jimmy Carter.

It was good old Jimmy who lifted travel ban and allowed family remittances of up to $500 to Cuba. But even he quickly succumbed to the strong lobby of right wing Cuban Americans and their cold war allies in key positions on the capitol, Pentagon and the political establishment of the US.

The Reagan years rolled back whatever softening that had started to creep in. He gave support to the Cuban American National Foundation as they sought to reinforce the blockade against Cuba.

The Anti Cuban Congressional Lobby regained prominence in foreign policy. The CIA and its array of unscrupulous hatchet men continued to seek the overthrow of Fidel Castro through all kinds of mischief making, propaganda and disinformation.

Sometimes the manoeuvres took ridiculous turns including a reported attempt to cause his huge beards to fall off!

They seem to think that the beards are part of his mystique and charisma therefore if they can get it off, maybe the ideology, the government and the man himself will just fall off and bother Washington no more.

Since Reagan the US has been gripped by a hegemonic loony right political establishment for whom Cuba remains a blot in its struggle for the triumph of the American way of life. The blot is all the more prominent because it is just off the coast of Miami. How can the American way that defeated known and unknown enemies in remote corners of the world be so impotent literally in its own backyard?

Even the 'liberal' Clinton regime after initially showing some open mind about Cuba, quickly succumbed to the CIA and the lucre of the Anti-Cuban lobby. It was under him that the Helms-Button Act came into being. It basically sought to internationalise US domestic law by imposing penalties on companies owned in a third country that do business in the USA and Cuba.

This brought it into direct collision with its allies both in the European Union and other Latin American countries with threats of reciprocal sanctions against US companies. But more than that, it strengthened Cuba's case against its bullying Goliath of a neighbour.

Even countries that instinctively follow the US balk when it comes to the issue of blockade against Cuba because it is both morally repugnant and politically unjust.

This is why successive resolutions in the UN since 1970 have found an overwhelming majority of states supporting the right of Cuba to choose its own way of life without threat or coercion.

Resolution 2625 of October 24 1970 approved by the 25th session of UN General Assembly affirmed the principle of the equality of states, right to self-determination and disavows interference in the internal affairs of other states stating:

“No state seeking to obtain advantages from any other one, can apply or promote the economic, political or any other kind of measures, to coerce another state, in order to make it subordinate the exercise of its sovereign rights. Each state has the inalienable right of choosing its political, economic, social and cultural system, without interference on the part of any other state”.

We can all agree that powerful countries in their pursuit of their naked selfish economic and strategic interests often ignore this resolution. Even the not so powerful states can get away with it as long as they are allied to the powerful countries or enjoy some kind of delegated irresponsibility of the powerful countries.

But the abuse of the principle does not eliminate its necessity without which the international system risks becoming anarchistic. Of course there are compelling grounds such as crimes against humanity, threat to international peace and security, gross abuse of human rights and aggression that may make a state forfeit the rights embodied by the principle of non-interference.

By no stretch of the imagination is Cuba considered by a majority of the countries and peoples of the world to have been guilty of these crimes. If it is guilty of anything, it is for proclaiming its independence from the American way of life. How can this be a crime?

From 1992 todate the majority of the states in the General Assembly has voted in favour of the resolution urging ''Necessity to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade by the United States of America against Cuba”.

Last year only three countries voted against the resolution, namely the US itself, its prodigal son, Israel and some Island country (Marshall Island) which is just a store for US surplus arsenal while 167 countries voted in favour: three against, 15 absent and four abstained. All African countries that voted supported the favour. And six of them were absent from the session, namely Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Morocco, Niger, Somalia and Sao Tome and Principe.

The US has been very active but unsuccessful, in trying to dissuade countries from voting in favour. On November 13, let all the countries unite again in saying Yes To Cuba, No to the USA by voting in favour of the Resolution.

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