Cuba thanks T&T for its ‘love’ amid US blockade

Cu­ba says it re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with T&T and has al­so ex­pressed its grat­i­tude to the peo­ple of this twin is­land re­pub­lic for their sol­i­dar­i­ty, amid sour­ing re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Cuban Am­bas­sador to Port-of-Spain, Gus­ta­vo Veliz Oli­vares, al­so thanked po­lit­i­cal and so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions for ex­pres­sions of broth­er­ly love dur­ing what he termed a “dif­fi­cult” time for his coun­try.

His state­ment comes in the wake of con­cerns ex­pressed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while ad­dress­ing Cari­com lead­ers in St Kitts ear­li­er this week, about the hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in Ha­vana, and Cu­ba’s con­tin­u­ing dic­ta­tor­ship in the ab­sence of free and fair elec­tions.

“There is glob­al fo­cus to­day on Cu­ba. Every leader here par­tic­i­pat­ed in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions in our re­spec­tive coun­tries. There­fore, I ask, why do some Cari­com gov­ern­ments and po­lit­i­cal par­ties be­lieve that they and their po­lit­i­cal par­ties’ sup­port­ers should have the right to con­test de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions to choose their lead­ers, but Cuban cit­i­zens should not have the right to do the same? You can­not ad­vo­cate for oth­ers to live un­der com­mu­nism and dic­ta­tor­ship but want to live un­der democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism your­self,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar stressed in her con­tro­ver­sial ad­dress.

How­ev­er, the Cuban Am­bas­sador point­ed out that hu­man rights re­main en­shrined in Ar­ti­cle 41 of Cu­ba’s con­sti­tu­tion. He al­so point­ed out that Cu­ba was a found­ing mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Rights Coun­cil and is par­ty to 44 in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights le­gal in­stru­ments.

“In terms of democ­ra­cy and hu­man rights, Cu­ba demon­strates achieve­ments and full guar­an­tees for its cit­i­zens, with its elec­toral sys­tem serv­ing as one of the in­di­ca­tors sup­port­ing this as­ser­tion. Vot­ing in Cu­ba is not manda­to­ry, and the (Com­mu­nist) Par­ty nei­ther elects nor nom­i­nates can­di­dates,” Veliz Oli­vares said.

“The most re­cent na­tion­al elec­tions were held on March 26, 2023. Out of a vot­er reg­istry of 8,129,321 peo­ple, 6,167,605 vot­ed, rep­re­sent­ing 75.87 per cent turnout, re­flect­ing a high lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion. As a re­sult of those elec­tions, 470 deputies were elect­ed, of whom 57.4 per cent are women, mak­ing it the sec­ond par­lia­ment in the world with the high­est pro­por­tion of women, with­out the ex­is­tence of a quo­ta law man­dat­ing sec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The high pres­ence of women in the Cuban Par­lia­ment demon­strates the recog­ni­tion and em­pow­er­ment of women as a re­sult of the Cuban rev­o­lu­tion­ary process,” the Cuban en­voy added.

How­ev­er, he warned that the in­ten­si­fy­ing US block­ade, which has been in place for more than six decades against Cu­ba, seeks to pro­voke a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis that will lead to in­ter­nal un­rest and de­mands for regime change.

De­scrib­ing the block­ade as “a fla­grant, mas­sive, and sys­tem­at­ic vi­o­la­tion of the hu­man rights of the en­tire Cuban peo­ple,” Veliz Oli­vares re­port­ed that be­tween March 2024 and Feb­ru­ary 2025 alone, it caused ma­te­r­i­al dam­age to Cu­ba es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.5 bil­lion dol­lars.

How­ev­er, he said, de­spite the pol­i­cy of as­phyx­i­a­tion by the Unit­ed States, Cu­ba will not col­lapse, stress­ing sur­ren­der is not an op­tion for the Cuban peo­ple.

“In the dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances the Cuban peo­ple are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing to­day, Cu­ba reaf­firms its vo­ca­tion for co­op­er­a­tion and ex­press­es grat­i­tude for the sol­i­dar­i­ty re­ceived from the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and from po­lit­i­cal and so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions of this broth­er­ly coun­try,” he said.