Cuba’s ambassador to Canada told MPs on Tuesday that the US is “suffocating a complete people” and creating an economic and humanitarian crisis, and urged Ottawa to follow through with a promised aid package.
A U.S. oil blockade has curtailed fuel and basic supplies to the increasingly isolated Caribbean island, because the Trump administration puts pressure on Cuba’s socialist government.
Speaking before the House foreign affairs committee Tuesday afternoon, Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz said the shortage of fuel has affected “every aspect of life within the country,” from food distribution to education to public health.
“The target of this oil blockade is obvious: to create a humanitarian crisis and take a look at to force regime change through it,” the ambassador told MPs.
“The collective punishment of an entire nation is an unjustifiable crime. One may disagree with the country’s political project, but there isn’t any right by any means that justifies an awesome power — based on its economic and military might — interfering in its internal affairs, violating its independence. Much less acceptable is a superpower attempting to attain its objectives by suffocating a complete people.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand told reporters earlier Tuesday ahead of a cupboard meeting that Ottawa was preparing an aid package for Cuba, but wouldn’t share details ahead of its announcement in “the approaching days.”
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said on Feb. 13 that Canada was working on providing some type of humanitarian relief to the island.
“I appreciate very much the choice or the news that the Canadian government is considering to approve a package of aid for Cuba,” Diaz said.
Cuba had been weathering economic hardship before U.S. President Donald Trump effectively cut off oil shipments to the island by blockading its chief supplier, Venezuela, and threatening tariffs on any country that stepped in to fill the void.
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Mexico, one other major supplier, suspended oil shipments after Trump’s threat, which got here alongside a declaration that Cuba represents “an unusual and extraordinary” national security threat to the U.S. because of the alleged harbouring of foreign terrorist groups and Russian and Chinese intelligence bases.
That statement is “ridiculous,” Diaz said Tuesday.
“This complete aggressive escalation against Cuba is predicated on a campaign of lies. Furthermore, we must ask, is the US acting in accordance with international law and the UN Charter? Does anybody have the precise to impose his will by force against one other nation?”
After the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January, Trump predicted Cuba’s government was “able to fall” next.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told senators at a hearing late last month that “we’d like to see a change” within the regime, but added the U.S. wouldn’t “make” that change.
Attempts by some committee members to ask Diaz concerning the Cuban government’s human rights record, including allegations of jailing political activists, were objected to by being outside the scope of the meeting’s give attention to the present humanitarian crisis.
Diaz nevertheless defended Cuba’s government while acknowledging “we are usually not perfect.” He also denied allegations that Cuba has sent its soldiers to Ukraine to fight on behalf of Russia.
The fuel shortage has crippled Cuba’s electricity grid and compelled airlines to suspend flights after Havana’s primary airport warned of a monthlong jet fuel shortage, threatening Cuba’s struggling tourism industry that has turn into increasingly reliant on Canadian visitors.
Cuba’s government has launched a fuel rationing program, limiting some services and reducing office and college hours.
Cuba’s health minister, José Ángel Portal Miranda, told the Associated Press last week that the country’s already-debilitated health-care system has been pushed to the brink of collapse by increased U.S. sanctions, threatening “basic human safety.”
Diaz said the health-care situation is “difficult,” including limited access to food, medicine and equipment. The shortage of fuel has also affected the power to transfer patients to hospital and power medical units, he said.
“Cuba has a superb health system that provides access to everybody with no payments, like in Canada, and we’re pleased with it,” he said. “However it’s being sabotaged by this case of the U.S. blockade.”
Although Rubio and other U.S. officials have blamed Cuban economic mismanagement for the present crisis, Diaz said the fault lies with the decades-long American economic blockade that has intensified under Trump.
“There’s a (suggestion) that Cuba is in this case since it’s a failed country, however it’s not true,” he said. “If we’re failed, why do they take a lot interest in destroying us?”
Mark Entwistle, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Cuba within the Nineteen Nineties, told Global News in an interview this month that Trump’s pressure campaign on Cuba puts countries like Canada in a “vice grip.”
“The Canadian government … needs to administer the U.S. relationship in a smart-minded way, (but at the identical time) no person desires to see a fellow country of the Americas be bullied and crushed and potentially fall into chaos,” he said.
Diaz urged Canada to step in and partner with other “friends” of Cuba to assist its people.
Countries like Mexico which have sent humanitarian aid, Diaz added, “say ‘the Cuban people don’t deserve this. We want to assist them.’ … I feel that is example of what will be done.”
—with files from the Associated Press
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