US blockade on Cuba: massive and systematic violation of the Cuban people's human rights.

New measures that intensify the genocidal economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on the Cuban people

Taken from White Book 2005

[Espanish Version]

For over 40 years, the Cuban people have suffered an economic, commercial and financial blockade designed to crush their resistance and make it renounce its right to sovereignty and independence. The George W. Bush administration has taken this genocidal policy towards the Cuban nation to unprecedented extremes.

The demand to end this policy, reiterated by an overwhelming majority of the UN member states by means of similar resolutions year in, year out at the UN General Assembly, confronts behavior by the US authorities that is openly contemptuous of international law.

The policy seeks not merely to suppress the Cuban people and damage its relations with other nations, but also ignores or restricts essential freedoms - some constitutional - of the American people.

Last year will go down in history as one of the most notable for the hostility and irrationality with which the criminal blockade against Cuba has been applied. The new measures planned and carried out by Washington during the year add to and elaborate on the framework of laws and regulations that have formed and escalated the blockade for over 40 years.

There is absolutely no rule of international law that justifies blockade in peacetime. Since the 1909 London Naval Conference, it has been a defined principle of international law that a blockade is an act of war and its use is accordingly restricted to the belligerents. The US Trading With the Enemy Act allows the President to impose emergency economic measures, but only during wartime or in response to an obvious threat to national security.

Various regional and multilateral accords condemn such acts as prejudicial to peace and to international security. In accordance with Article II(c) of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (December 9, 1948), the blockade maintained against Cuba amounts to an act of genocide.

The complete baselessness of the widely differing explanations employed by successive US administrations for over 40 years as pretexts for their economic war on Cuba has been demonstrated by certain of their own official documents, declassified in 1991. These include testimony and irrefutable proof that these hostilities predated any measure adopted by the Revolutionary Government from 1959 onwards.

The representatives of the Batista dictatorship fled to the United States with $424 million stolen from the Republic's funds. This sum was deposited in American banks and has never been returned to the Cuban people. Worse, in 1959, just five weeks after the people's victory, America rejected a request from the new authorities for a modest loan to maintain the stability of the domestic currency.

The Cuban revolutionary government adopted a series of legitimate measures designed to recover the nation's wealth and place it at the service of the people. The reaction of the United States was prompt and aggressive. On July 8, 1959, in retaliation for the adoption of the Cuban Agrarian Reform Law, the US Congress granted the president wider powers for suspending foreign aid to any country that expropriated US assets.

A number of unilateral sanctions against Cuba aimed at wrecking its economy followed in quick succession. Abolition of Cuba's sugar quota (July 1960) was succeeded by banning of aid to Cuba, the launching of a trade blockade (Section 620/a of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961), and refusal by US firms on instructions from Washington to refine the Russian oil Cuba was obliged to import following the banning of sales of fuel to Cuban purchasers imposed on American suppliers.

On February 3, 1962, President Kennedy issued Presidential Proclamation 3447, imposing a total blockade on trade with Cuba and instructed the Treasury Secretary to apply the ban on exports to Cuba. The Proclamation historically marked the public institutionalization of sanctions against Cuba which, as we have seen, had started a lot earlier.

As early as April 6, 1960, a report by Department of State official I. D. Mallory, declassified in 1991, highlighted the purpose of the economic pressures being applied, by saying: “… the majority of Cubans support Castro … there is no effective political opposition … the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba … A line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government.".

This document does not attempt a comprehensive historical analysis of the various stages in Washington's genocidal policy of blockade against Cuba. An appreciation of the criminal nature, petty motives and disastrous consequences of this policy for the exercise of the Cuban people's human rights can be gleaned from just a few notes on the way it has operated in recent months.

The more significant events marking the escalation in the economic war on Cuba, between the summer of 2003 and the end of last year, include the following:

On September 30, 2003, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a regulation banning the publication of scientific articles originating in nations subject to US sanctions, Cuba among them. Following strong pressures from the American scientific and Academic community, on April 5, 2004 the measure was withdrawn.

On February 9, 2004, in Miami, Florida, US Treasury Secretary John Snow announced a new extraterritorial measure in the form of the immediate confiscation by OFAC of the assets within US jurisdiction of ten firms "owned or controlled by the government of Cuba or Cuban nationals", specializing in promotion of travel to Cuba and the sending of gifts. The list included concerns organized and located in Argentina, the Bahamas, Canada, Chile, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

On February 26, 2004, President George W Bush signed Presidential Proclamation 7757 restricting departures from US territory of vessels bound for Cuba. The implementing regulations issued by the US Coastguard Service on July 8, 2004 openly state that the aim is "to improve the way the embargo on the Cuban government is applied". Penalties for infractions range from fines of up to $25,000 or 5 years' imprisonment, or both, and confiscation of the vessel involved.

Washington has brought heavy pressure to bear on banks in third countries, to persuade them to hamper or block Cuba's financial operations. The Swiss bank UBS was fined $100 million for accepting transactions originating in Cuba.

On May 6, 2004, President George W. Bush approved in its entirety a report by the so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. This included some 450 recommendations and proposals for new measures designed to overthrow the Cuban Revolution and install a puppet regime under total US control.

On June 30, 2004, regulations enforcing and tightening the measures announced on May 6 came into force.

The economic, financial and commercial embargo that ten US administrations have maintained and intensified against Cuba form part of a larger policy of hostility and aggression towards the very existence of the Cuban nation as a sovereign and independent entity built by Cubans for Cubans.

Among the milestones in the process of tightening the blockade and extending its scope was the passing in 1992 of the 'Torricelli Act', conceived with the cynical and criminal intent of delivering the final and fatal blow to Cuba's economy.

This legislation abruptly cut off Cuba's trade in medicines and food with the subsidiaries of US firms in third countries, at a time when 85% of Cuban foreign trade had disappeared with the disintegration of the socialist camp in Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It also imposed severe bans on navigation to and from Cuba, thereby institutionalizing with force of law provisions that are clearly extraterritorial.

The criminal intention of undermining the Cuban people's rights as regards healthcare and food supply was quite clear. In 1991, Cuba's imports from subsidiaries of US concerns totaled $718 million, of which 91% was represented by food and medicines.

In 1996, the Helms-Burton Act was passed. Among other aspects, this legislation: firmed up and filled in the details of the existing mechanisms designed to eliminate the last vestiges of economic, trading and financial links between US firms and Cuba; increased the number and scope of the extraterritorial measures, with the aim of tracking down any transaction or business that might benefit the Cuban economy; imposed persecution and sanctions on foreign investors in Cuba; authorized the funding of hostile, subversive and aggressive actions against the Cuban people, via a program designed to destroy a constitutional system chosen by the Cuban people, and to impose a 'change of regime' that would ensure the achievement of the US power basic aim of dominating the Cuban nation.

Since that time, a whole series of new actions and measures of hostility and aggression have appeared in quick succession, in attempts to close up every possible loophole in the wall of sanctions erected by the blockade.

According to figures updated in 2004 by the National Statistical Office of the Republic of Cuba, 69% of the resident population was born after 1959, so that about seven out of ten Cubans have been born and have lived under the unilateral coercive regime of sanctions deriving from the US blockade.

A preliminary financial evaluation of the direct effects suffered by the Cuban population of the application of this genocidal measure for over 40 years indicates a loss of over 79,325.200.000 dollars - an average of 1,803 billion dollars a year. This conservative figure does not include the 54 billion dollars attributable to direct damage to economic and social objectives from acts of sabotage and terrorism incited, organized and funded from the United States. (See the appendix).

Neither does it reflect the value of goods not produced due to the restrictions, or the losses arising from the onerous conditions imposed on Cuba in respect of banking and international debt financing for investment and business. Had Cuba been able to access funding at similar levels and on the same average terms as those applying to other nations in the region at a similar stage of economic development, Cuba's economy would be marked by a much faster rate of growth and of improvement in the living standards of the population - a direct expression of the exercise of economic, social and cultural rights and the right to develop.

Without the annual drain on resources caused by the US blockade, the additional funds would have had a multiplier effect on living standards and the population's exercise of its economic, social and cultural rights. For example, just an extra $127.6 million a year would provide 1.2 million children of between 7 and 15 years with a liter of milk every day. Currently, a liter a day at subsidized prices can only be provided until age 7. An extra $51.8 million would be enough to double the quota of chicken presently distributed monthly to all Cubans via the ration-book system. One billion a year would have been sufficient to fund the construction of 100,000 new homes annually, nation-wide. Within 5 years, 2.5 million Cubans (nearly a quarter of the population) could have been adequately housed.

It would be impossible for the Bush administration to maintain its policy of hostility, blockade and aggression towards Cuba in the context of the presumed need to promote and protect human rights in the country.

How could a government responsible for the most appalling, premeditated aggression towards policies and programs designed to promote economic development, wellbeing, security and right to life of Cubans lay claim to the title of defender of the human rights of the Cuban people?

The Bush administration has greatly increased the severity of the blockade imposed on Cuba. At the end of last year, US senators and congressmen publicly reported that OFAC employed five times as many agents to identify and investigate infractions of the Cuba blockade laws than it assigned to tracing the finances of Al-Qaeda.

Between 1990 and 2003, whereas OFAC launched 93 inquiries relating to international terrorism, it initiated 10,683 under the procedures aimed at preventing Americans from exercising their right to visit Cuba. On the basis of the 93 terrorism-related cases, OFAC fined the offenders a total of $9,425; the fines imposed on US citizens who went to Cuba without a Treasury Department permit totaled $8 million.

In a report dated February 9, 2004, OFAC expresses its satisfaction at the fact that its Civil Penalties Division had at that time a list of 200 actions relating to infractions of the blockade on Cuba and that most of these had resulted in the imposition of fines. It further announced that between October 10 and November 30, 2003, it had notified 348 new criminal actions arising from activities of this kind.

The tourist-sector revenues lost to the Cuban economy because of these abusive measures amounted to between $93 and 104 million, not counting the damage - as yet unquantified - caused by the actions of the US authorities in third countries since June 30, 2004, designed to discourage travel to Cuba.

Further Extraterritorial Harassment

In maintaining their unilateral policies of economic coercion, the US authorities adopt the pretext that every nation has the right to choose its trading partners. However, in the case of the blockade imposed on Cuba, it is clear that the application of this policy goes far beyond the simple rejection of a trading partner.

The report of the 'Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba' recommended “strict application” of the sanctions identified in Part IV of the Helms-Burton Act, which bans the granting of visas to enter the United States to foreign investors in Cuba. Indeed, it proposed increasing the level of funding and personnel deployed in enforcing these provisions of the Law mentioned.

The report calls on the American authorities to perform a detailed evaluation to determine whether the application of Part III of the Helms-Burton Act could hasten the downfall of the Cuban Revolution. In practice, it recommended holding trials in US courts of third-nation entrepreneurs who conducted business with Cuba. So far, international pressures have resulted in this idea being shelved, regularly every six months.

Another aspect of the new measures is country-by-country review, with a view to imposing sanctions on a selective basis and dividing the international community in its rejection of the extraterritorial measures adopted under the Helms-Burton Act.

The report also calls for action to "neutralize Cuban government front companies by establishing a Cuban Asset Targeting Group, comprised of appropriate law enforcement authorities, to investigate and identify new ways in which hard currency is moved in and out of Cuba".

Before announcing these new anti-Cuba measures, the Bush administration looked into ways of interfering in Cuba's relations with international banking institutions, with a view to blocking funds derived from the tourist industry, dollar-shop sales and other services, which Cuba deposits with foreign banks. Such funds, which are entirely legitimate, are used directly (among other purposes) for the purchase of fuel, food, medical equipment and medicines.

The impact of these measures has been felt, because of their extraterritorial nature, in every sphere of the nation's economic life. The following are among the more recent examples of events which amply demonstrate this:

-Importation of a quadruple animal vaccine from a Dutch firm (Intervet) was suspended when the U.S. government warned the supplier of the risk it was running by selling to Cuba. The vaccine includes 10% or more of an antigen made in the USA. The Intervet directors were told that if they went on with the sales, they could be heavily fined or, worse, forced to close their U.S. branch operations.

- In 2002, Cuba reported how the Zurich branch of Xerox had refused to renew the lease on a photocopier at the Cuban embassy in Switzerland . This absurd example of the extraterritorial application of the blockade rules was repeated in October 2003, this time involving a branch of the firm in Paraguay, which refused to sell a photocopier to the Cuban embassy there. The local representatives of Ricoh also cited the restrictions imposed by the US blockade and similarly refused to sell to the embassy.

- If this latter example seems ridiculous, what happened on 10th May 2004 in the Irish Republic defies description. On that date, Hitachi Printing Solutions Europe refused to sell a simple printer cartridge to the Cuban embassy there.

- The US Treasury Department fined the US biotechnology-sector concern Chiron Corporation $168,500 solely because one of its European subsidiaries sold Cuba two types of vaccines for Cuban children in the period 1999-2002. That was the largest fine paid by a US-based firm last year.

- As revealed in Cuba's report to the UN Secretary General in 2003 , the Cuban health service has been unable to buy sources of Ir-192 radioactive isotopes used in radiation therapy on malignant tumors, following the acquisition by Varian Medical Systems of the brachytherapy-equipment business operated by the Canadian firm MDS Nordions, which supplied such equipment to Cuba.

In responding to this problem, the equipment needed was sought in Europe and one of the devices mentioned was purchased from the Dutch firm Nucletron. After the order had been placed and accepted, the management of the supplier firm announced that it was unable to deliver the computer coupled to the device, because it was of U.S. manufacture and the US government had banned its export to Cuba.

Repercussions on healthcare

Cuba's national health service has been a prime target of the US blockade ever since the Revolution.

In many cases the repercussions have been dramatic, not only because of the human suffering of patients and their relatives, but also because of the frustration felt by medical personnel when prevented from saving a life or relieving pain. (See Cuba's report to the UN Secretary General - Document A/59/302 of the UN General Assembly).

The following are some of the more recent cases illustrating the effects of this inhuman, genocidal policy on the public health sector:

- Care of children with cancer is one of the areas most severely affected by the restrictions. Purchases of cytostatic drugs - vital to the survival of these patients - have been significantly curtailed, following the acquisition by US transnationals of the pharmaceutical laboratories with which Cuba had supply agreements.

An example of such cases is the problems in obtaining isotope I-125 for treating children with cancer of the eye.

- Another problem affecting cancer patients arises from the lack of internal (bone) prostheses for tumor treatments that avoid amputation. For example, following successful, state-of-the-art chemotherapy on bone tumors, where the patient has responded well and conservational surgery is possible, i.e. removing the diseased bone but leaving the limb, Cuban surgeons have been unable to adopt this approach because of the non-availability of the relevant extensible prostheses. These lengthen as the child grows, so that the patient can keep the leg with an internal prosthesis, and avoid the emotional trauma that results from an amputation, especially during adolescence.

- Growing problems caused by the blockade in the clinical-laboratory, microbiology and similar diagnostic fields reflect domination (70%) by US firms of the manufacture of diagnostic equipment and reagents. For example Beckman-Coulter, Dade-Behring, Abott and Bayer all ban sales of their technologies - some unique of their kind worldwide - to Cuba.

- There have been problems in obtaining diagnostic aids for detecting certain emerging diseases, which are often deadly. Examples include:

• The continuing inability of the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine to obtain the TermoScript RT-PCR System kit for detecting the coronavirus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), made by the U.S. firm INVITROGEN.

• Restrictions imposed by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, coupled with refusal by the laboratories belonging the U.S. companies Focus Technologies and Panbio, which manufacture diagnostic kits for detecting IgM and IgG antibodies, have complicated detection of encephalitis in cases of West Nile Virus and Avian Influenza.

• Cuban children are unable to benefit either from the new type of inhalers for asthma crises; Washington denies them this right.

- The UN's Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is funding a program of cooperation with Cuba which envisages the acquisition of anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS sufferers in Cuba.

The Global Fund proposed arranging the purchase of these drugs via UNICEF and the International Dispensary Association (IDA), on the basis of the preferential prices applied by these agencies.

However, the US firm Abbott refused to supply two of the products needed for treating the victims (Ritonavir and Lopinavir+Ritonavir), claiming that due to the US economic sanctions, its government does not allow the supply of products to Cuba. The result was that drugs costing $49,700 when bought from Abbott had to be sourced outside the United States at a cost of $280,400 (nearly six times as much).

Repercussions on the Education of the Cuban People

The repercussions of 45 years of blockade on the Cuban educational, cultural, sporting and academic fields have been substantial. Intensification of this policy during the last decade has had a significant impact on their development and has deprived the Cuban and American peoples of open interchange in these areas.

In the educational sector, restrictions and other difficulties in purchasing teaching materials are accompanied by increasing problems caused by the blockade as regards provision for children with special educational needs, calling for more complex equipment which in some cases enables the defect concerned to be remedied.

To quote a single example, that of the situation at the Abel Santamaría special school, where 150 blind or partially-sighted boys and girls struggle against the limitations their condition imposes on their lives: to learn to read and write and acquire the knowledge needed to lead a useful life, every child must have a Braille machine - a requirement that, despite every effort, the Cuban government has been unable to meet, due to the restrictions imposed by the blockade.

The problems relating to the purchase of these machines persist. The current price in the United States of a Perkins-brand Braille machine is around $700; because of the blockade, Cuba has been obliged to source these elsewhere at much higher prices (up to $1,000). Difficulties persist also in obtaining braillon paper, essential for this teaching activity.

Impact on Cuba's foreign trade

The arbitrary regulations and legislation that implement this pernicious policy towards our country continue to affect our economic development, causing substantial losses. In 2003 alone, Cuba incurred extra expense to the tune of $308.4 million on goods purchased at prices above those prevailing under normal conditions, largely because of differences in the terms of financing and the inevitably higher operational expense - freight rates, insurance and other transportation costs - resulting from the US siege on Cuba's foreign trade.

Similarly, Cuban export business suffered substantial losses in 2003, in terms of exports that, but for the blockade, could have been made to the United States. The total under this heading amounted to $457 million.

By restricting the Cuban people's access to information, knowledge and dealings in goods and services, Washington is contravening agreements reached by the international community - notably the spirit and letter of the recent Declaration of Principles of the World Summit on the Information Society. According to paragraph 46 of this document “States are strongly urged to take steps with a view to the avoidance of, and refrain from, any unilateral measure not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that impedes the full achievement of economic and social development by the population of the affected countries, and that hinders the well-being of their population.”

Washington maintains its severe restrictions on sales of food and medicines to Cuba.

Food sales to Cuba have been subjected to complicated rules and procedures that have placed tremendous difficulties in their path. US firms seeking licenses to sell to Cuba are confronted with long-winded bureaucratic processes. At the same time, the rules oblige Cuba: to pay cash for such supplies; not to be able to access financial credits (even private-sector credit is disallowed); to effect the relevant transactions through banks in third countries; and to use other currencies, thereby incurring additional banking costs. Cuban vessels are banned from participating in the related transportation.

This situation has become even more complex following an announcement by the US Treasury Department in a press release in February, that Cuba must pay for the goods before the vessel is loaded at the American port of departure. This diverges from the standard procedure of payment against shipping documents and transfer of title to the goods to the Cuban purchaser following receipt of the payment in cash by the US exporter. To date, there have been no reported cases of delay in complying with this arrangement.

The new rule represents an escalation designed to hinder sales of food, already subject to numerous restrictions. Apparently, it could result in goods destined for the Cuban population being held up in US territory under orders of the American courts without legal foundation issued against the Republic of Cuba. Also, the regulation ignores the wishes of the US Congress, which has authorized sales to Cuba.

Despite the reputation of American suppliers for efficiency and product quality, the new measure introduces an element of great uncertainty in purchases from the United States, by threatening the direct supply of food to the Cuban population, including our children, as well as purchases of raw materials used in producing other food products.

Cuba's food importing company (ALIMPORT) has confirmed that it will honor its existing contractual commitments and is prepared to continue buying in the American market provided the terms offered are consistent with normal international trading practice. Similarly, it has confirmed its confidence in the farmers, businessmen, carriers, dock workers, congressmen and others who, over these last three years, have shown their willingness to develop mutually beneficial trade relations.

On top of all this, Cuba is banned from sales of any kind to American entrepreneurs interested in buying Cuban products, thereby ruling out the possibility of creating sources of income that would support expanded operations.

Food purchases have been made possible through enormous efforts by firms in both countries to complete the processes of negotiation, agreement and implementation of such operations, and owes nothing to the attitude of the US authorities. The President himself went on record to clarify that the blockade would continue regardless of the food sales, and indeed that the existing measures of economic coercion and sanction were being intensified.

Violations of Human Rights by the Blockade and the Further Measures Introduced in 2004

The most serious and significant impact of the policy of sanctions against Cuba and of the recent measures to tighten the blockade are the threat these pose to the exercise by the Cuban people of its right to self-determination.

In furthering its plans for subjugating the nation, the Bush administration has no hesitation in flagrantly violating the constitutional right of American citizens to travel at will to a country with which the United States is not at war - at least, not so declared publicly. This right is also enshrined in Article 12 of the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, which is legally binding on the United States as a party to this international accord. Worse still, Washington is riding roughshod over the right of Cubans living in America to visit relatives in their country of origin.

In this connection, in its Resolution XXI (document A/59/503/Add.2) “Respect for the right to universal freedom of travel and the vital importance of family reunification” passed in December 2004, the UN General Assembly called on "all States to guarantee the universally recognized freedom of travel to all foreign nationals legally residing in their territory".

According to the same resolution, all states should "allow the free flow of financial remittances by foreign nationals residing in their territory to their relatives in the country of origin".

In this document, the General Assembly also calls on all nations to refrain from enacting, and to repeal, if it already exists, legislation "intended as a coercive measure that discriminates against individuals or groups of legal migrants by adversely affecting family reunification and the right to send financial remittances to relatives in the country of origin".

The recent restrictions on educational and academic exchange visits between American citizens and institutions and their Cuban counterparts violate a significant number of the Cuban and American peoples' rights as enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The rights thus violated include that of freedom of opinion and expression (Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) under which every individual has the right, with border restrictions, to seek, research and receive information and opinions and “the benefits to be derived from encouraging and developing international contact and cooperation in the scientific and cultural fields” (Artículo 15.4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

By virtue of the measures introduced on May 6, the Bush administration is acting in open contravention of Article V of the UNESCO declaration of November 4, 1996, on the principles of international cultural cooperation, which recognizes that “cultural co-operation is a right and a duty for all peoples and all nations, which should share with one another their knowledge and skills.”

The new measures of blockade and of real, total economic war not only increase the obstacles that successive US administrations' anti-Cuba policies have placed in the way of the Cuban people's full exercise of its right to development, enshrined in the corresponding declaration of the UN General Assembly (Resolution 41/128 of December 4, 1986) and reaffirmed by consensus in the Declaration and Programme of Action of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights. It also constitutes a criminal violation of Article 1.2, common to both international accords on human rights, which establishes that “in no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.”

Although for the moment the anti-Cuba measures applied by Washington since June 30 do not include further reduction of the already-modest sums that a US-resident Cuban are permitted to send to his or her relatives back home - an example of discrimination, since among all the legal immigrant communities in America, the rule applies only to Cubans - they will involve significant restriction on the classes of relatives entitled to receive these.

Article 16 of the Declaration and Article 23 of the Covenant both recognize that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” The 1995 World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen), in Paragraph 80 of its action program reaffirmed this precept and went further, stating that “in different cultural, political and social systems, various forms of the family exist.”

The mouthpieces of the Bush administration, in stepping up their aggression towards the Cuban people, are seeking to deny Cuban families their identity, by rejecting the inclusion in these of kin that have traditionally been an integral and inseparable part of this basic entity of Cuban society.

In blatant contravention of various articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically 19, 20 and 21, which underwrite freedom of opinion and association and "the right to take part in the government of his country", Cubans resident in the United States are prohibited from sending money or parcels to relatives in Cuba who are "government officials or members of the Communist Party". Illustrations of the supreme irrationality of this rule include the possible case of an elderly person living in Cuba who is constrained to renounce his or her political rights in order to be able to continue receiving remittances from a son or daughter resident in the United States.

The escalation of the economic war on Cuba will further the aims of those anxious to provoke a crisis - real or artificial - that will serve as a pretext for US military intervention.

In intensifying its threat of military action against the Cuban people - an option it has not rejected and which on the contrary has been alluded to as a possibility in public statements on various occasions by certain of the Bush administration's spokespersons and representatives of the Cuban-American terrorist mafia in the US Congress - the United States is violating the sacred right of the peoples, both American and Cuban, to peace.

By Resolution 39/11 of November 12, 1984, Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace, the UN General Assembly solemnly declared that “the preservation of the rights of peoples to peace and the promotion of its implementation constitute a fundamental obligation of each State.”

The same Bush administration that cynically fabricates and imposes, using blackmail and other pressures, a spurious text at the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva with the bogus aim of "promoting the human rights of the Cuban people", has clearly shown its true colors with the new anti-Cuba measures announced on May 6, 2004, as bearing the sole, historic and premeditated responsibility for violating the human rights of the people of Cuba.

The initiation of further anti-Cuba tactics as from June 30, 2004 marked a new qualitative stage in Washington's policy of hostility, blockade, aggression and large-scale, flagrant, premeditated and systematic contravention of the Cuban people's human rights, significantly compounding acts tantamount to crimes of genocide under Article II(b) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This sub-article of the Convention defines as crimes of genocide acts of “causing serious bodily or mental harm” committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

As a fitting expression of the humanist vocation of the Cuban people, while Washington persisted in its campaign to undermine the wellbeing and health of the people of Cuba, on June 21, 2004 Cuba's President Fidel Castro publicly offered the US government free medical treatment for 3,000 of America's poor - the same number as the deaths in the attacks on the twin-towers in New York in September 2001 - over five years.

Cuba is confident that an overwhelming majority of governments world-wide will - as do decent and honest peoples and individuals the world over - continue to recognize the vital importance of opposing the maintenance of an illegal policy of unilateral hostility and aggression which undermines the very foundations of multilateralism.

The Cuban people also expect most of the world's governments to act consistently in opposing the spurious maneuver engineered by the US administration year after year at the Commission on Human Rights. There is little sense in opposing the blockade at the UN General Assembly and then supporting attempted manipulation at Geneva by which Washington seeks to create a pretext for maintaining and intensifying its policy of sanctions and aggression against Cuba.

APPENDIX

LOSSES AND DAMAGE TO THE CUBAN ECONOMY CAUSED BY U.S. BLOCKADE

(cumulative, to 2003)

Losses caused by: Millions

INCOME NOT EARNED FOR EXPORTS AND SERVICES $36,225.4

LOSSES ARISING FROM GEOGRAPHIC RELOCATION OF TRADE $18,049.7

IMPACT ON PRODUCTION AND SERVICES $2,847.5

TECHNOLOGICAL SANCTIONS $8,265.4

IMPACT ON SERVICES TO THE POPULATION $1,546.3

MONETARY AND FINANCIAL IMPACT $8,348.5

INCITING EMIGRATION AND BRAIN DRAIN $4,042.4

TOTAL IMPACT OF U.S. BLOCKADE $79,325.2