Major left parties in India issued a joint statement on Sunday, February 1 expressing complete solidarity with the people of Cuba facing unprecedented threats from the administration of US President Donald Trump.
“After the attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores the US is now proceeding against Cuba,” by threatening countries which supply it oil with sanctions.
The move is against all norms of international politics and UN charter and must be condemned, the left parties’ joint statement declared. The signatories of the statement include Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, Forward Block and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP).
These blatant imperialist moves against Cuba must be resisted by “the entire international community,” the left parties asserted and called on the Indian people to rally in defense of Cuba’s sovereign rights.
Though all US administrations have maintained economic and political sanctions and blockades on Cuba since the revolution in 1959, Donald Trump in his first and second terms has escalated attacks against the island nation to an unprecedented level. In Trump’s first term he reversed the modest progress made during the Obama-led “thawing” period, adding Cuba back on the US’ unilaterally determined State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSoT) list and imposing hundreds of new sanctions. While the Biden administration largely maintained these measures, in the last week of his administration Biden removed Cuba from the SSoT list, which was quickly reversed by Trump on day one of his second term.
Following the attacks on Venezuela on January 3 in which president Maduro and Flores were kidnapped and scores of Cubans deployed to guard the Venezuelan president were killed, Trump has issued fresh threats of regime change in Cuba.
Prior to the January 3 attack, the Trump administration had imposed a naval blockade on Venezuela, impeding it from sending fuel to Cuba.
On January 29, Trump upped the ante and, in an executive order, declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and issued a blanket threat of additional tariffs on countries that sell oil to it.
Read more: From blockade to asphyxiation: the US war on Cuba enters its most brutal phase
The move is expected to further deprive millions of Cubans of crucial energy supplies and further cripple the economy.
An attack on Cuba is “an attack on humanity itself”
Denouncing Trump’s move on Friday, Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel termed it an attempt to “suffocate” the economy of the country on “a false and baseless pretext.”
The fresh US attacks on Cuba are widely seen as an attempt to destabilize the socialist government in Cuba which has resisted and survived all previous attempts at regime change, including terrorist attacks, targeted assassination attempts, US-fomented riots, and the expanded blockade.
The left parties noted in their statement that “the people of Cuba have historically resisted all earlier attempts, and we are confident that they will resist the current aggression as well.”
Noting how the “heroic nation” of Cuba “has consistently stood for international solidarity and assisted countries by sending doctors and medical personnel in times of need,” and “readily shared its medical expertise and vaccines with many countries in the Global South,” the left parties asserted that “attacking such a noble country should be considered an attack on humanity itself.”
The left parties also demanded the Indian government to come out and make a clear stand against US aggression in Cuba and stand in solidarity with the people.
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