General Assembly: 30th plenary meeting, 79th session

1. Item 38

   report of the Secretary-General

🇨🇺 Cuba

1. 🇨🇺 CubaFirst reply▶ 3:04:50 · 5 min

   Muchas gracias, señor presidente. Thank you very much, Mr President, Mr President, as we do every As we see every year, the US once again has used lies and manipulation to justify the blockade against Cuba. As it also does every year, its isolation grows and its loss of credibility on the international stage as a result of this criminal policy. What they're doing seems to have no limits. They hold the Cuban government responsible for the suffocation imposed uh caused by the blockade imposed on our country. Not only not even one word we heard from the US referred to Cuba's denomination as a supposed sponsor of terrorism. Many delegations today and yesterday rejected that designation in this very chimer. The only goal of that arbitrary measure is to ratchet up the blockade and to cause more suffering for the Cuban people. The US in vain is seeking to bring to false bring to the Assembly false figures regarding the exports to Cuba and humanitarian aid. They're cynically using multi million dollar sums from uh the US development agency to they're allocating that to subversion in Cuba. They're also styming remittances and they're using some. They're using scant remittances that do arrive to our country to subvert our order. At the same time, they're stepping up their economic war to ultimately ensure our economic collapses. The government of the US has said that it is a trading partner of Cuba. However, it s it persecutes our transactions. It intends to visit reprisals upon any nation that sells to ours. Pro products that are made with 10% UN components or any business that exports to the US uh uh products containing Cuban raw materials in order to sustain the hostility of the blockade, the US is deliberately manipulating the issue of human rights. The United States has no moral authority whatsoever to issue lessons about human rights, neither to Cuba or to any other nation. We are all very well aware how how they make opportunistic use of the issue of human rights to justify their hegemonic actions and their interventionist policies. The government of the United States has not ratified 72% of the primary international human rights treaties is responsible for extrajudicial executions, abductions, and torture. They remain retain in legal limbo Prisoners on Cuban territory that it equally illegally occupies via the Guantanamo base. At the same time they hold up human rights and they claim to be defenses defenders of freedom of speech. They at the same time quell peaceful student demonstrations against the complicity of the US government in the genocide against the Palestinian people. The United States is far and away the nation with the highest number of firearm related uh homicides and mass shootouts. Only last year, in that country there were at least six hundred and fifty six mass sh kill mass shootings, and more than forty three thousand people died at the hands of armed violence. This means That on average 118 deaths occur a day. No other country even comes close to that chilling figure. The pol police brutality is part of the daily reality of life in the United States. It's no surprise that in a country in which d racial discrimination is systemic, Afro American people disproportionately suffer from the use of lethal force and there's almo they are more than three times more likely to be killed by police than white people. What human rights can a country can we can a country seriously talk about where their children can be tried as adults and sentenced to life in prison? More than tw ten thousand young people are in adult prisons in the US. If the US really is interested in the well being being of the Cuban people and in respecting democracy, it would listen to the majority of the citizens of its own country that call for the lifting of Cuba's blockade. If the US really wants to champion human rights in Cuba, they would immediately lift the blockade. It is a flagrant mass. And systematic violation of human rights of the Cuban people. If the United States respected the international community as well as the UN Charter and international law, it would comply with the twenty thirty-two resolutions that the GA has adopted calling for the lifting of the blockade against Cuba. I conclude by reiterating on behalf of the government and people of Cuba our deep gratitude to all Member States that, with their voice and vote, have supported the legitimate request of Cuba for the blockade to be lifted. Once and for all, thank you. I think um the representative of Cuba.

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