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Cuban embargo
(Kaieteur News) – The US has increasingly assumed the role of a global bully, using its economic and political power to exert pressure on smaller, less powerful nations. Its sanctions against neighbouring Cuba have contributed to the hardships facing ordinary Cubans, raising serious questions about the humanitarian consequences of its policy.
Given the distressing circumstances facing the Cuban people, we believe the US is playing an increasingly troubling role on the world stage. Once regarded as the world’s policeman, it is now at risk of being seen as a power that uses its influence to intimidate smaller nations. Its approach to Cuba raises questions about whether Washington would adopt the same hardline stance towards a country with comparable economic and military strength, such as China.
Venezuela and its rich oilfields have fallen into the clutches of the US. Guyana is trapped in the US grip, helpless to do anything about its condition, save for some pawing of the air by its impotent leaders. Cuba is on the danger line, and for decades an object of constant unjustified pressure from a big bully of a neighbour. Worse still, not only has the US applied a lock on Cubans through heavy sanctions, it has also threatened to apply sanctions on any country that seeks to assist struggling Cubans by supplying them with oil and gas products. It is this particular action that has attracted the anger of 10 former heads of government from the CARICOM bloc.
“Surely, such U.S. conduct is inhumane, and undoubtedly contrary to international law,” said the 10 former heads in an open letter. We go a step further and describe what the US is doing to Cubans as beastly. People do not do that to other people. A superpower should be the last country that engages in this kind of cheap and vulgar bullying. A superpower such as the US should think it is below its dignity to push others to go against a UN resolution calling for an end to the US sanctions. Using bribes and other inducements to defeat the UN resolution has to be the action of a superpower that has lost all self-respect, and is aware that its inhumane position is unjustified.
Former Guyana head of state, Donald Ramotar is one of the 10 signatories to the open letter. He has been outspoken in his objections to what the US has dished out on Cubans. He has been particularly harsh on regional leaders, who have been largely silent when many have been killed on the high seas by the US, under the flimsiest of pretenses. We have to wonder what he thinks of his comrades in leadership positions in the PPPC Government, who have been under the knee of the US and like where they are.
The greybeards in the region, 10 former heads of government, are appalled at how docile current leaders are in the face of intensifying US encroachments on national sovereignty. They may be celebrated as partnerships and special relationships, but at their core, there is one fact that cannot be denied. The region is being recolonized one country at a time. Guyana is gone, Trinidad is gone, and so is Venezuela and its world leading reservoirs of oil. After the long, hard, battles for freedom from former colonial masters, the US has now rushed in to take charge of the role previously held by Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, among other European colonizers. The irony should not be lost on citizens of this region. For it was the US in the post-World War II era that had pushed its European allies, especially Great Britain, to free its subject countries and dominions from the yoke of colonialism.
Now, from whatever perspective it is looked at, the US is in the forefront of the world’s colonizers. There is Cuba long squeezed and long prostrate, but even that is not satisfactory. The US seeks to walk all over a sovereign nation, and drags regional leaders along as silent and passive partners in its atrocities. Former President Ramotar is sure to have old friendships in the PPPC Government. This limits how hard he can go at its leaders for their abject submission in the face of US assaults on already overwhelmed Cubans. We have no such friendships and none of those limitations. The PPPC Government, with President Ali in charge, is too much of a puppy in the US hand, as it expands the recolonizing of this region.
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