SOMETHING LIKE THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN By Manuel E. Yepe http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/ The fact that it was the United States that excluded Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism is paradoxical. It has been the island nation that for nearly 60 years has suffered the effects of the terrorist methods used by Washington to oppose and punish the desire for independence and identity that have given substance to the Cuban revolution. The most regrettable in the drafting of these media reports is that they imply that the US has the right to act as witness and judge in cases of state terrorism: an international crime in which no other country has so often incurred as it has since the end of World War II. The news, which has reached the world through the Western mainstream media appears to legitimize the right of Washington to draw and impose the purposes and provisions of that list that would only be legal if its motivations and effects were an internal matter, applicable only to US entities. The terrorist intention of the sanctions against those that violate the provisions that the United States imposes –extraterritorially– to the countries on the list are in the terror imposed on any person or entity –public or private— in the world that seeks to engage with Cuba for any commercial, financial, scientific, cultural, or trade purpose. Just a simple reference to the possibility of losing their US suppliers or customers is often enough to create panic. Cuba was inserted in the list in 1982. It was said then that it was because of the support the island had allegedly provided to the movements of independence that became widespread in Latin America inspired by the successful Cuban revolution. It seems that the inclusion of Cuba in the list of sponsors of terrorism was part of the support that the United States offered at the time to Operation Condor through which those movements and many thousands of people with progressive ideas were brutally repressed. The bloody Operation Condor was a criminal pact launched when the United States had a real network of cruel dictatorships in Latin America (Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia). Tens of thousands of Latin American patriotswere killed or imprisoned and tortured in South America, Central America and the Caribbean. For many reasons and actions of popular pressure, the repressive tyrannies had to make concessions, and Latin America opened up –gradually, and with different amounts of bloodshed– to democratic processes. These processes that respected the will of the peoples lead –through democratic processes– to the arrival in power of authorities more responsive to popular demands and truly identified with the interests of their peoples. Several of the patriots who had been guerrilla fighters, supporters of those struggles, or their followers, as well as some military who objected to the repressive role that had been imposed on them to relate to their countrymen, are now those who lead and defend the new democracies in Latin America. After the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba, several major obstacles remain for the normalization of their ties. Among these are the economic blockade that Washington euphemistically calls embargo and the naval base that since 1903 the United States occupies in the vicinity of Guantanamo Bay, an area of 116 square kilometers (45 square miles) which is inalienable sovereign territory of Cuba. There also remain for discussion those demands for the expropriation of the properties of US citizens that could not be negotiated in the past because the US government prevented it, and the Cuban compensation demands for the damages caused by the blockade. The US Congress is still considering ending the travel ban on US citizens to Cuba. Using its legal powers, President Obama has eased some restrictions imposed by the US Travel Ban but, overall, tourism to the island remains illegal. The Special Licenses that can be granted only cover a small portion of the US citizens interested in learning about "the fruit forbidden for more than half a century" and those who now reach the Island under “special licenses” of the US government are not authorized to visit the best tourist spots, including the beaches. Let us hope that in the future the only superpower in the planet does not abuse in this way the rights and hopes of a small country that struggles for its independence and identity. May 30, 2015. |
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