U.N. Vote to Condemn (Obama's?) Embargo on Cuba

On October 28th, the United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote on a resolution condemning the United States embargo against Cuba.

If past is prologue, it will pass resoundingly. The General Assembly has adopted similar measures in each of the last seventeen years; in 2008, by a margin of 185-3. But that was a condemnation of an embargo enforced, energetically and unapologetically, by the administration of George W. Bush. The vote this year takes place for the first time on President Obama's watch, and so has special significance.

The Secretary-General has prepared a public report that catalogues what UN members and UN organizations say about the embargo.

This document is a powerful reminder that the U.S. embargo is viewed internationally with great seriousness and in ways that are deeply damaging to U.S. interests and our image overseas.

Lest anyone think this policy is only provocative to nations in the non-aligned world, its opponents include Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, the European Union, India, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Russia.

They are plain-spoken in their opposition. Australia reminds us it votes "consistently" against the embargo. Brazil says it is the "Cuban people who suffer the most from the blockade." China says the embargo "serves no purpose other than to keep tensions high between two neighboring countries and inflict tremendous hardship and suffering on the people of Cuba, especially women and children." Egypt and India condemn the extra-territorial reach of our sanctions, which Japan says run "counter to the provisions of international law." Mexico calls these measures coercive. Russia "rejects" the embargo. Nations across the planet have enacted laws making it illegal for their companies to comply.

Our policy is especially controversial in our own hemisphere, where the U.S. alone is without diplomatic relations with Cuba, and where forum after forum -- including the Rio Group, the Ibero-American Summit, the Heads of State of Latin America and the Caribbean, and CARICOM -- has rejected the embargo and called for its repeal.

Beyond our diplomatic interests, the report forces us to move beyond the stale, political debate in which the embargo is most often framed (where every problem on the island is blamed on either Cuba's system or U.S. policy) and to confront the significant injuries this policy inflicts on ordinary Cubans.

It reminds us:

• The embargo stops Cuba from obtaining diagnostic equipment or replacement parts for equipment used in the detection of breast, colon, and prostate cancer.
• The embargo stops Cuba from obtaining patented materials that are needed for pediatric cardiac surgery and the diagnosis of pediatric illnesses.
• The embargo prevents Cuba from purchasing antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV-AIDS from U.S. sources of the medication.
• The embargo stops Cuba from obtaining needed supplies for the diagnosis of Downs' Syndrome.
• Under the embargo, Cuba cannot buy construction materials from the nearby U.S. market to assist in its hurricane recovery.
• While food sales are legal, regulatory impediments drive up the costs of commodities that Cuba wants to buy from U.S. suppliers, and forces them in many cases to turn to other more expensive and distant sources of nutrition for their people.
• Because our market is closed to their goods, Cuba cannot sell products like coffee, honey, tobacco, live lobsters and other items that would provide jobs and opportunities for average Cubans.

This list, abbreviated for space, is actually much longer, more vivid and troubling, as the report documents case after case of how our embargo affects daily life in Cuba. And for what reason? Because it will someday force the Cuban government to dismantle its system? As a bargaining chip? These arguments have proven false and futile over the decades and what the UN has been trying to tell us since 1992 is that they should be abandoned along with a policy that has so outlived its usefulness.

And yet, it is now the Obama administration supporting and enforcing the embargo -- still following Bush-era rules that thwart U.S. agriculture sales; still levying stiff penalties for violations of the regulations; still stopping prominent Cubans from visiting the United States; still refusing to use its executive authority to allow American artists, the faith community, academics, and other proponents of engagement and exchange to visit Cuba as representatives of our country and its ideals.

To his credit, President Obama has taken some useful steps to change U.S. policy toward Cuba. He repealed the cruel Bush administration rules on family travel that divided Cuban families. He joined efforts by the OAS to lift Cuba's suspension from that organization. He has opened a direct channel of negotiations with Cuba's government on matters that include migration, resuming direct mail service, and relaxing the restrictions that Cuban and U.S. diplomats face in doing their jobs in each of our nation's capitals.

This is a start, but more -- much more -- needs to be done. Not because the UN says so, but because our country needs to embrace the world not as we found it in 1959 -- or in 2008 -- but as it exists today. President Obama can do this. Our times demand that he do so.

 

 

Comments

[hosmart]

In my travels to Cuba with Witness for Peace I have seen the dramatic effects of the U.S. economic embargo that has deprived Cubans of needed medicines, medical and scientific technology, easy access to school supplies, farm machinery, spare parts and the list goes on and on.

My Cuban friends have suffered directly the impact of this policy which impedes development and makes life difficult for them. It's been 47 years of the same old, worn-out, futile policy and all this pain and suffering for nothing. Simply put, this policy hasn’t worked. It has violated the human rights of Cubans and U.S. citizens and hasn’t achieved its goal of changing the system in Cuba. It is clear that a continuation of the same policy won’t work in the future.

It's time for a change. It's time for the Congress to stop the embargo and for the Obama administration to lift the travel ban which restricts our rights to travel to Cuba. One of my friends on a recent trip to Cuba told me, "When your friends tell you that Cuba is hell, tell them to accept the challenge and visit Cuba to see for themselves what kind of hell this is. Even though we have so many limitations we have never stopped having a positive approach toward life."

[jmcauliff]

No US foreign policy is as universally despised as our trade war against Cuba. The margin of the US defeat at the UN on Wednesday will reflect the most dramatic failure of the Obama Administration to live up to its promise to improve US standing in the world.

The tragedy is that the White House could have easily influenced the vote by making a straightforward reform consistent with its own values and goals and the opinion of two-thirds of Americans.

President Obama has the power to reverse his predecessor’s virtual ban in 2004 on non-tourist travel to Cuba for educational, cultural, religious, humanitarian and other people-to-people purposes; while pledging to sign pending legislation eliminating all travel restrictions.

Instead the US and Cuba are mirror images, each sacrificing freedom to travel for political reasons. We stopped the NY Philharmonic from performing in Havana this week by refusing a travel license. They stopped the blogger Yoani Sanchez from receiving an award in New York last week by denying an exit visa.

Different terminology for the same thing.

The While House needs to hear from people who think this is outrageous. http://www.whitehouse.gov/ope/contact/

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

[usambcuba]

Part 3-Politically, the embargo survives only out of political money that is raised by less than 5000 individuals-- about one million dollars spent every two years. And in the last Presidential election, President Obama did not need the embargo crowd to even get elected in Florida! In fact, if he could only know personally what those of us who campaigned for his election in Florida witnessed in Little Havana just after his election victory was announced, the cursing of his election and the waving of a battle sized Confederate flag in front of Versailles Restaurant! You do not owe the embargo crowd anything politically Mr. President! It is up to you to bring an end of the stain on our good name as a nation and set a new course of relations and possibilities -- not the darkness and loss of economic opportunity and influence we have with the embargo and travel restrictions.
We want political prisoners freed. Let the negotiations begin. We want to promote democracy and economic progress - lets tear down the wall we first started building on October 19, 1960, and allow the power of the family and amicable connections--Americans, Cuban Americans, and Cubans all share together, to grow in an atmosphere of normal travel, normal communications, and basic trade. Let the Cubans on the island make sense of their politics without us being in their way. They will. Let our influence reach them peacefully, respectfully, and creatively to solve the serious problems we face.

[usambcuba]

Part 2 -
The sad fact is that the Cuban American community squanders its capacity to be the greatest positive influence for change and progress with Cuba by holding onto failure. For goodness sakes its your brethren, your family that is on that island. Change will never be possible through hostility, vengeance, violence, or seeking to use U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. taxpayer to be the instruments in fighting a battle with a country whose political system or leaders we do not agree with nor necessarily like. Cuba is a sovereign country with problems like any other country in the world. The fact is we have normal, respectful relations with a host of countries whose leadership is authoritarian and human rights records are strewn with problems. We do not embargo those countries. We do not restrict travel to those countries. We talk with those countries and their leaders. We use diplomacy and the power of American creativity, products, goods, services, and the American people themselves to be ambassadors for democracy and peaceful change. Not an embargo. That has only achieved heaping more misery on an already difficult situation.

[usambcuba]

Part 1 - On Wednesday October 28, 2009, the United Nations General Assembly will vote to condemn our embargo on Cuba one more time. The issue will not even be a close vote, but more an eighteenth reminder of by how much we will lose that vote. Once more our failed foreign policy and hypocrisy will take another hit on the world stage. We say we want human rights and democracy in Cuba and are erroneously led to believe somehow that the embargo is leverage. Leverage for what? The truth is the embargo may very well be the greatest obstacle to any real progress our nation may be able to achieve with our island neighbor ninety miles off the coast of Florida. Nothing positive is possible with an embargo or travel restrictions. That is the truth, That is the reality. Pro-embargo forces would have us ignore this by altering the perception of our elected politicians with political money -- by playing on their ignorance to the national detriment of all.