People's Democracy

ON November 27, the United Nations held its 10th annual vote on the strangulating US embargo against its southern neighbour, Cuba, and for the 10th consecutive year the world community overwhelmingly urged the US to dismantle this criminal embargo.

With a vote of 167 to 3, the UN general assembly called on the US to end its 40-year embargo against the suffering island. Only the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands voted in favour of keeping the embargo. Latvia, Micronesia and Nicaragua abstained.

This year, Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, offered to compensate 6,000 US companies and citizens who suffered financially when businesses were nationalised after the Revolution of 1959. However, he said, any financial compensation would have to take into account the damage done to the Cuban economy by the US blockade.

Cuba has been under a US embargo since the country defeated the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Apart from imposing a ban on mutual trade, Americans are barred from travelling to Cuba except with a government waiver.