Emergency Lies, Collective Punishment: Hands Off Cuba

The National Network on Cuba calls on all people of good conscience to act in strong opposition to the illegal executive order by Donald Trump that escalates the blockade on a peaceful neighbor, Cuba. We denounce the actions by the United States government to inflict collective punishment against the Cuban people. The absurdity of declaring a “national emergency” over Cuba while people in the United States cannot afford housing, healthcare, or food, while migrant neighbors and their children are kidnapped by ICE and supporters are murdered in the street by the government – is unconscionable. From within “the belly of the beast” as Che Guevara would say, we must categorically break down the fabricated lies and the United States’ bogus reasoning for its latest aggression towards Cuba.

We recognize that this latest executive order is an extension of the long maintained US policy to punish those who dare to be a friend to Cuba. It is why we have always used the term “blockade” to name what the U.S. is doing to Cuba. That this is not just a cessation of trade between the United States and Cuba, but rather the United States using violence and intimidation on a global scale to influence how other countries interact with the nation of Cuba. Cuba has long been a world leader in friendship with other countries. They send medical brigades of doctors around the world to this day, including when the pandemic of the coronavirus hit Italy: Cuban doctors come to the rescue of hospitals in Italy’s Calabria and when ebola epidemic hit West Africa: Cuban doctors train, then fight Ebola in Africa | CNN. They even tried sending doctors to the U.S. during Hurricane Katrina to which the United States declined: Katrina aid from Cuba? No thanks, says U.S.

We, members and co-chairs of the National Network on Cuba, will not allow Cuba to be bullied with lies, violence, and intimidation. We will act alongside Cuba and support their resistance to being controlled by U.S. interests. We demand the end to the sixty-four year-old blockade of their country, a return of their land at Guantanamo Bay, and their removal from the so-called “State Sponsors of Terrorism List”. We demand that the Trump administration cease their threats against foreign nations that offer a lifeline of support to Cuba. And we demand an end to the violence of the United States perpetrated at home and abroad against peace loving peoples and nations.