The French journalist and writer qualifies the policy of financial and commercial blockade maintained for more than 60 years by different US presidents against Cuba as “State terrorism”.
In statements to Prensa Latina, the researcher has written that it was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Lester D. Mallory who, in April 1960, produced a memorandum to impose an embargo on Cuba “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”.
Lemoine explains that the justification used to bring about this tough measure was that “the majority of Cubans support Castro, therefore the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship”.
In 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration instituted an embargo on the island and, on 3 February 1962, with executive order 34/47, President John F. Kennedy decreed a total blockade on Cuba.
The researcher says that, from that moment until today, every president that has been in the White House has maintained the blockade.
According to Lemoine, “the blockade is not only a crime against Cuban lives, but it is also an insult and attack on the international community due to its extraterritorial nature”, this is why it could be defined as “state terrorism”, in addition to “the equally infamous unilateral, coercive measures designed to overthrow the Venezuelan government”.
Furthermore, and despite causing “great and unjust suffering”, the blockade “has not managed to overthrow the revolutionary government, first with Fidel Castro, then with Raul Castro and now with Miguel Diaz-Cana, nor has it ended the dignity of the Cuban people”, he said. As a result of all this, the expert on Latin America and the Caribbean has questioned whether it might be advisable for “the international community to include the United States in the list of state sponsors of terrorism”. (PL)
(Translated by Donna Davison – Email: donna_davison@hotmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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