National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression denounces U.S.  criminal interference in Cuba

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following July 26 statement from the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

What the U.S. is doing in Cuba is criminal. The U.S. blockade of the small island nation of eleven million is meant to put a stranglehold on the people. The economic disruption caused by the U.S. embargo causes shortages and difficulties across the island. Not only does the U.S. embargo stop U.S. businesses from trading with Cuba, it punishes companies in other countries that trade with Cuba.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, instead of offering economic and medical cooperation, the U.S. attempted to cause trouble in Cuba by funding and provoking small groups of reactionaries. This came just as Cuba was rolling out a vaccine program to benefit every person on the island and reopen the tourist economy.

The response of Cuba’s leaders to the U.S. provocation was to mobilize large rallies with tens and hundreds of thousands of people from unions, community groups, and other sectors of society. These massive rallies for the defense of the Cuban revolution go largely unreported in U.S. media, but social media allows us to see them. We will not be fooled.

Of course, if one wishes to find political repression in Cuba, the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay detention camp is the place to look. The U.S. tortured and held under “indefinite detention without trial” hundreds of prisoners from U.S. wars in the Middle East. Prisoners are still held there today. The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base needs to be closed and returned to its rightful owners, the Cuban people.

The U.S. government, under the thumb of Wall Street financiers, has a long history of violent intervention in Cuba, from the Bay of Pigs invasion, to repeated assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, to organizing Florida based terrorists blowing up planes and physically attacking those who disagree with them. It is no surprise that masses of people across Cuba would mobilize against U.S. backed reactionaries and demand respect for Cuban independence, democracy and sovereignty.

We call for an immediate end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba. We call to restore diplomatic, trade, travel and cultural ties between the U.S. and Cuba. We call for an end to U.S. backed assassination attempts against Cuba’s leaders, as recently happened in Haiti. We call for solidarity with the Cuban people and their government. The Cuban people are in charge of their own destiny and have been ever since their revolution began on this day, July 26, in 1953.

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