Blockade to Cuba is Genocide, UN Rapporteur Asserts ("Bush Pinochet of WH"

UN Food rapporteur Jean Ziegler calls Bush the 'Pinochet or the White House'. Good one!!

:bounce:


<clips>

Geneva, Mar 20 (Prensa Latina) The pugnacious blockade the US government has kept over Cuba for over four decades is a genocide, the United Nations for Food rapporteur Jean Ziegler has asserted here Sunday.

Ziegler, a renowned Swiss lawyer and sociologist, denounced this anti-Cuban policy as "a flagrant violation of human rights", adding that the US hostile policy had not caused more catastrophic damage on the Island because the Cuban government had given full priority to public health, feeding and education for people.

"The US runs after any business relationship Cuba sets with foreign enterprises from any given third country, interferes in any Cuban financial transaction and limits family remittances and visits," he denounced.

He said that as a UN rapporteur, he has the right to ask governments for explanation, but the Bush administration had turned down a visa request when the UN asked the US State Department for permission so he could visit Washington to discuss the blockade issue.

http://www.plenglish.com/Article.asp?ID=%7B8F8E6E51-F42C-4E74-ADE1-588E3B4CA1D8%7D&language=EN

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<clips>

US Pushes anti-Cuba Project at UNCHR

Geneva, Mar 20 (Prensa Latina) Cuba has rejected a US-sponsored 4-paragraph draft resolution that urges the UN Commission on Human Rights to keep the Island on the dock.
# Blockade to Cuba is Genocide, UN Rapporteur Asserts

According to a copy obtained by Prensa Latina, the draft resolution requests from the UNCHR to submit a report on Cuba during its current session and to keep monitoring the Island through a special rapporteur.

However, Washington submitted it by itself. This shows that the Bush Administration has failed this time to find countries to play the role of sponsors or co-sponsors of its anti-Cuban political gamble, as it happened in the past with the Czech Republic, Costa Rica, and Peru, among others.

For Cuban diplomats in Geneva, it represents a setback for Washington on its persistant moves to accuse Cuba at the UNCHR.

The US document limits itself this time to recall previously passed anti-Cuba resolution, except the 1998 one. This document was turned down by 19-16 vote.

http://www.plenglish.com/Article.asp?ID=%7BD3AF14F2-3207-4B0C-8319-5447203DC8AD%7D&language=EN

He said that as a UN rapporteur, he has the right to ask governments for explanation, but the Bush administration had turned down a visa request when the UN asked the US State Department for permission so he could visit Washington to discuss the blockade issue.

Pathetic.

The claim that the US blockade of Cuba is a "genocide" is gross hyperbole that cheapens the meaning of the word at a time when REAL genocide is again a genuine and very real phenomenon.

I oppose the US blockade of Cuba. I think it's stupid, I think it's ineffectual, and I believe that the embargo causes very real and uncalled-for hardships for the average Cuban.

However, I believe that the US blockade of Cuba continues to be used as an excuse by the Castro regime for the shortages, inefficiencies, and hardships caused by the Marxist-Leninist-style economic regime that Cuba has been stuck under since the so-called "intensifications" of 1968. If Castro would allow the growth of small businesses and encourage small-scale entrepreneurship, the Cuban economy would not only grow, it would grow in the face of Generalissimo Gee Dubya's anti-communist crusade. Noriega's Panama had a capitalist economy, too, and a major reason that "Poppy" Bush sent in the troops was because Noriega's Panama was better able to withstand US economic pressure than a clumsy, centralized, Soviet-style economy.

Let's save "genocide" for the real thing--like what the Ottoman Turks did to the Armenians, the "ethnic cleansings" in the Blakans, the Holocaust, what some Hutus did to the Tutsis, and what the Sudanese government is doing in Darfur. Having the US blockade used as an excuse for the Castro regime's continuing economic failings is getting very old and very, very stale.

You state as a fact that Castro does not encourage the growth of small business, but except for the US funded NED propaganda I have not read anything which says Castro inhibits small business. In fact their largest industry, tourism in Cuba, consists mainly of small businesses.

But in a country where even toothbrushes are not allowed in under the US imposed embargo, many small businesses can not exist. But of course the NED propaganda says that is because of Castro, not the embargo.

I state this because I've read the Dallas Morning News print editions. I expect that you'd find similar reportage and more inconvenient facts if you chose to do a bit of research. You'd probably find articles on the Castro regime's hitting small business owners with higher taxes and restricting business licenses.

The nature of capitalism, unlike Marxist-Leninist-style socialism, is liquid rather than solid. Goods and services can flow around legal and political obstacles like trade embargoes or seep through the cracks if governments facilitate such transfers. That was why such outlaw states like Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa were both able to continue for so long.

When I visited Cuba back in 2001 and 2003, I was able to drink Coca-Cola at the tourist hotels. Why--because foreign capitalists were more than willing to thumb their noses at the embargo and do business with state-owned Cuban corporations. The car fleet in Cuba was largely Asian imports and Renaults. The buses our tour group traveled in were Brazilian-built.

Foreign vendors--especially in places like Brazil and the European Union--are more than willing to do business with Fidel in spite of blockheaded Boosh regime policies. What can Gee Dubya do to them--declare embargoes on European goods and set off a major recession?

When I last traveled to El Salvador back in 2002--hardly a hotbed of social equality or an Asian-style mini-tiger--even some of the most backwater areas had far more goods (howbeit low-end) available than what most Cubans have access to. When you can say that flea-market style vendors near the railroad tracks in El Salvador (Hardly a major artery of commerce!) have more for sale than does a typical Cuban store, I think that speaks volumes about who and what is responsible for keeping the Cuban economy in the doldrums. And it ain't the Bush/DeLay/Ballart embargo.

I am a social democrat. I oppose Banana Republican Social Darwinism every bit as much as I oppose Marxist--Leninism. I do not subscribe to the theory commonly held by Marxists and genuine leftists and Fox News and the so-called "Young Conservatives" that the choice in the Americas is only between Social Darwinist or kleptocratic crony capitalism on the one hand and total state control of the means of production on the other.

in it's Cuba policy,although the Texas Legislature passed a resolution in 2001 to LIFT THE EMBARGO on Cuba the very moment _Bush graced them with his absense by moving into the White House.

There's no illusion that paper's ever going to take an honest position on this issue.

"Denial of Food and Medicine:
The Impact Of The U.S. Embargo
On The Health And Nutrition In Cuba"
-An Executive Summary-
American Association for World Health Report
Summary of Findings
March 1997

After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. But since 1992 the number of unmet medical needs patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment-has sharply accelerated. This trend is directly linked to the fact that in 1992 the U.S. trade embargo-one of the most stringent embargoes of its kind, prohibiting the sale of food and sharply restricting the sale of medicines and medical equipment-was further tightened by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act.

A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all of its citizens. Cuba still has an infant mortality rate half that of the city of Washington, D.C.. Even so, the U.S. embargo of food and the de facto embargo on medical supplies has wreaked havoc with the island's model primary health care system. The crisis has been compounded by the country's generally weak economic resources and by the loss of trade with the Soviet bloc.

Recently four factors have dangerously exacerbated the human effects of this 37-year-old trade embargo. All four factors stem from little-understood provisions of the U.S. Congress' 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (CDA):

1. A Ban on Subsidiary Trade: Beginning in 1992, the Cuban Democracy Act imposed a ban on subsidiary trade with Cuba. This ban has severely constrained Cuba's ability to import medicines and medical supplies from third country sources. Moreover, recent corporate buyouts and mergers between major U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies have further reduced the number of companies permitted to do business with Cuba.
   
2. Licensing Under the Cuban Democracy Act: The U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments are allowed in principle to license individual sales of medicines and medical supplies, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons to mitigate the embargo's impact on health care delivery. In practice, according to U.S. corporate executives, the licensing provisions are so arduous as to have had the opposite effect. As implemented, the licensing provisions actively discourage any medical commerce. The number of such licenses granted-or even applied for since 1992-is minuscule. Numerous licenses for medical equipment and medicines have been denied on the grounds that these exports "would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests."
   
   
3. Shipping Since 1992:The embargo has prohibited ships from loading or unloading cargo in U.S. ports for 180 days after delivering cargo to Cuba. This provision has strongly discouraged shippers from delivering medical equipment to Cuba. Consequently shipping costs have risen dramatically and further constricted the flow of food, medicines, medical supplies and even gasoline for ambulances. From 1993 to 1996, Cuban companies spent an additional $8.7 million on shipping medical imports from Asia, Europe and South America rather than from the neighboring United States.
   
   
4. Humanitarian Aid: Charity is an inadequate alternative to free trade in medicines, medical supplies and food. Donations from U.S. non-governmental organizations and international agencies do not begin to compensate for the hardships inflicted by the embargo on the Cuban public health system. In any case, delays in licensing and other restrictions have severely discouraged charitable contributions from the U.S.

(snip/...)

http://www.cubasolidarity.net/aawh.html



Doctors In San Diego, California Protesting U.S. Customs Seizure of PC's Destined to Project InfoMed in February 1996

The cost of the embargo in human terms can be calculated both statistically and anecdotally:

AAWH visited a Cuban pediatric ward then on its 22nd day without the nausea-preventing drugs normally used in chemotherapy. The 35 children in the ward were vomiting an average of 28-30 times a day.

Cuban children with lymphoblastic leukemia are denied access to new life-prolonging drugs, such as oncaspar, patented by a U.S. company, that produces longer periods of remission and is less traumatic to the child patient, requiring only one sixth the number of injections. Left untreated, this type of leukemia is fatal in two to three months.

Pediatric-size needles for intravenous chemotherapy and glucose are in short supply, necessitating puncturing children's tiny veins with adult sized needles.

Surgeries dropped from 885,790 in 1990 to 536,547 in 1995, a glaring indicator of the decline in hospital resources such as most modern anesthetics and related equipment, specialized catheters, and disposable supplies.

The deterioration of Cuba's water supply has led to a rising incidence of water borne diseases such as typhoid fever, dysenteries and viral hepatitis. Mortality rates from acute diarrheal disease, for instance, increased from 2.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1989 to 6.7 in 1994. Children are disproportionately affected by such disorders.

The embargo is directly responsible for up to six month delays in AZT treatment for a total of 176 HIV patients in Cuba at a time when AZT was the only approved medication heralded for slowing the progress of the virus. As one AIDS professional told the AAWH, "The problem is that our patients don't have time to wait. innovation.
(snip/...)

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~josephwd/Cuba/FoodMedicine.html

Attempting to disprove my statement by the content of the DMN's editorial pages won't work. That dog won't hunt. Anyone who has read the Dallas Morning News for any length of time knows that while its EDITORIAL PAGES tend to be very conservative, its reportage tends to have a far more objective slant, and tends to be far more in-depth and comprehensive than what the Miami Herald tends to publish. The DMN's more right-wing readership has noticed this shift; they don't like it and accuse the DMN of becoming "liberal" and "communistic" (Ridiculous charges, of course.).

Claims from certain left-of-center elements that Dallas Morning News coverage should be discounted reminds me of the standard dittohead/Freeper cries of "liberal" media bias because certain MSM media doesn't reprint Boosh regime and "Conservative" movement propaganda verbatim.

The reason Fidel Castro's Cuba continues to be in economic straits is because of the Castro regime's centralist Marxist-Leninist--style economic regime.

Castro apologists keep ignoring the fact that this is not 1960, 1970, or even 1980. The US may yet be the country with the most powerful military, but US economic supremacy no longer holds. The EU is already at parity with the US (And is beginning to pull ahead) and is proving far more generous than the US has been for decades.

Many European and Brazilian concerns have reached that point which deposed Shah what's-his-name wanted for imperial Iran--being in the position of being able to wave back if the US waves a finger at them. If the US tries to impose sanctions on some of the bigger dogs for dealing with "Forbidden Island," it may well find itself in very serious trade disputes with the EU and other countries.

The USs Helms-Burton law (and a myriad of other amendments) prevent direct sales of products to Cuba that are also sold in the USA without OFAC approval. Same goes with shippers - they cannot port in the US for 6 months after porting in Cuba. This makes shipping products prohibitively costly for most products (except for the tourist hotels and businesses - mostly joint ventures with European companies).

This is where the third party vendors (and shippers) come in. Of course, this means another two (or so) steps in capitalist profiteering - making most health care products (that are patented and sold in the US) too costly for a poor country like Cuba. For example, aspirin cannot be sold to Cuba directly from Bayer, so any aspirin in Cuba gets there via these vendors and shippers at a significantly marked up price - making it (and other meds) too costly for the average Cuban in Cuba.


Abajo Bush!

Viva Cuba!

Not that hard to grasp for those who take the time to think it over!

Does anyone here really believe that?

anyone who knows anything about embargos knows that they are designed to starve the general population into a state where they will overthrow their government.

<clips>
The Politics of Starvation

Cuban expropriation of American property and land reform policies motivated the United States into decreasing Cuba's sugar subsidy and implementing an embargo that intended to starve Cuba of spare parts for the U.S. machinery that powered their economy. The Soviet Union aided Cuba in these unfortunate years by purchasing sugar at inflated market prices and forwarding strategic materials to the island. Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union strengthened Uncle Sam's determination to cripple Cuba by embargo. Although the reasons for the embargo faded with the years and became totally unnecessary after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States, still wanting to overthrow the Castro government and catering to the Cuban exile community, tightened the embargo. In 1992, congress passed The Cuba Democracy Act, 1992. This act forbade United States subsidiaries to trade with Cuba, and deprived the island of $700 million in trade, 70% of which had been in food and medicine. The Act also prohibited U.S. citizens to spend money in Cuba. It allowed private groups to deliver food and medicine. Although the United Nations general assembly on November 2, 1995, voted 117 to 3 to recommend an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, President Clinton on March 12, 1996 signed into law The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, otherwise known as The Helms-Burton Act. This Act imposed penalties on foreign companies doing business in Cuba, permitted U.S. citizens to sue foreign investors who make use of American-owned property seized by the Cuban government, and denied entry into the U.S. of the investors in Cuba. The tightened embargo reinforced Cuba's suffering after Russia withdrew subsidies. The pre-90's Cuba had been credited with eliminating hunger and malnutrition, wiping out infectious diseases and received applause from the World Health Organization for its public health system. Cuba of the mid-90's portrayed another image. The American Association for World Health and the American Public Health Association determined that the embargo caused significant deterioration in Cuba's food production and health care:

* Cuba is banned from purchasing nearly 1/2 of new drugs on the market.
* Physicians have access to only 890 medications, down from 1,300 in 1989.
* Deterioration of water supply has increased water borne diseases.
* Daily caloric intake dropped by 33% between 1989 and 1993.

New Jersey Congressman Torricelli predicted that his Cuban Democracy Act would bring Castro's downfall within one year. That has not happened. Humanitarians, such as Congressman Torricelli, have been eager to take advantage of the sufferings of the Cuban people and intensify them for political purposes rather than affording the people a means to recover from the tragedy. This procedure is equivalent to hitting a person you don't know as they are falling down. Cuba claims that forty years of trade embargo has cost the Caribbean island $60 billion. In 1998,they estimated their losses at $800 million. Due to the European nations refusal to abide by the embargo, and increased tourist revenues, the economic war against Cuba is slowly being lost.

http://www.alternativeinsight.com/The_Politics_of_Starvation.html

would ja? Going to have to watch you every minute. Maybe report you to Al Gonzalez!





http://www.leftofcenter.1hwy.com/

Even a "left of center" song: http://www.suzannevega.com/audio/liveinlondon.htm

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Cuba and Venezuela Face US and Colombia

...In other words the harsher and more extreme the measures adopted by the Bush Administration against Cuba the greater Washington's isolation. This is true externally as well as internally. Let us examine several illustrations.

The US exploited the jailing of over 70 US paid propagandists, labeling them "political dissidents", initially securing the support of the European Union. A year later, the EU has broken with Washington and renewed and expanded its cultural and economic ties with Cuba.

While the US tightens its trade embargo, Cuban trade and investment ties with China and the rest of Asia, Venezuela and the rest of Latin America, Canada and Europe have expanded and deepened. The US restrictions on family remittances has been weakened by family members sending money via "third countries such as Mexico, Canada, Dominican Republic etc. Canadian, European, Latin American and Asian visitors have topped 2 million annually and new influxes of investment have made up for most of the shortfall from the restrictions on remittances.

Finally Washington's attempts to limit Cuba's access to energy sources after the fall of the USSR have been defeated by the far-reaching trade and investment agreements with the Venezuelan government of President Chavez. The Chavez regime provides Cuba with petrol at subsidized prices in exchange for Cuba providing a vast health and education program for the poor of Venezuela. The Cuban-Venezuelan political and economic ties have undercut US efforts to force the Caribbean and Latin American countries to break with Cuba. As a result of past and present failed policies of directly attacking Cuba, the Bush administration has turned toward destroying Cuba's strategic alliance with the Chavez regime.

http://www.counterpunch.org/petras03222005.html

Cuba is hopping; it's a long, long way from genocide. Have words lost all meaning??!!!

Every single year, more than six million people die because of poverty and hunger. Every single year. Every single year. Every single year.Every single year.Every single year.Every single year.

This could be stopped immediately with 10% of the Pentagon-budget.
I don't want to mention the 500 wars and illegal military actions the USA has started after WWII. But one thing is sure: when we all drown in a sea of blood, one of us will raise his head and shout: "this will cheapen the meaning of the word", before she or he dies.

The real thing is happening every single day.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

Denial runs deep and wide here at DU too, I see.
Yes, the US embargo is genocidal.

FYI,
http://www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=genocide&query=genocide

Main Entry: geno·cide
Pronunciation: 'je-n&-"sId
Function: noun
Date: 1944
: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group

The Human Cost of Crippling Castro
http://slate.msn.com/default.aspx?id=2674

I learned the United States cuts off supplies in two ways. First, sale of goods with U.S.-made or patented parts--which include most new drugs and medical devices--is embargoed under the Trading With the Enemy Act. As U.S. companies merge with foreign competitors, the ban covers more and more. For example, according to the Washington Post, U.S. acquisitions removed Cuba's suppliers for pacemakers and several chemotherapy agents. Companies can seek a permit for medical sales, but hardly any have because of the unmanageable requirements.

Second, the 1992 Torricelli Act cut European supplies by prohibiting ships that dock in Cuba from entering U.S. ports for six months. Few shippers are willing to lose access to the world's largest market for the sake of this tiny country. The act also outlawed food sales to Cuba. Only Libya faces a similar ban. (Iraq and North Korea can at least barter for food.)

It's disingenuous to argue that the embargo doesn't actually hurt many people. After all, the point of the ever-tighter provisions is to cut off goods--including food and medicine. But imposing suffering can be justified if it averts greater suffering or serves a larger good. And the embargo once served worthwhile purposes--forcing the Soviet Union to spend resources propping up Castro and denying Cuba resources to foment revolution elsewhere. Now, however, Cuba poses no threat to anyone.

It's conceivable we could justify continuing to cause pain and death if the embargo fueled enough discontent to cause Castro's overthrow. But it shows no sign of doing so. The relationship between political freedom and economic conditions seems far more complicated than advocates of free trade or the embargo seem willing to admit. I doubt that either policy can bring Castro down. Meanwhile the embargo continues to exact its human costs.

I am glad to see that posters on this thread DO NOT support the US embargo. :thumbsup:

Keeping Sgt. Lazo Out of Cuba
March 21, 2005

Bob Herbert
The New York Times


An American citizen, Sergeant Lazo has two teenaged sons in Havana. He visits them as often as he can, but they do not want to emigrate to the U.S. Last June, during a two-week leave from Iraq, the sergeant visited relatives at his home in Seattle, then flew to Miami, where he had planned to board a flight to Cuba for a brief visit with his sons. He wanted very much to see them before heading back to Iraq.

But tough new restrictions on travel to Cuba by individuals with relatives on the island were about to take effect. "I went to the airport, but they wouldn't let anybody board the planes," Sergeant Lazo said. "There were two more days before the restrictions would take place, but they told me the planes were leaving empty."

The planes were flying to Cuba to pick up Cuban-Americans traveling back to the U.S. In anticipation of the tighter rules, no new passengers were allowed to fly to Cuba. Sergeant Lazo had to return to Iraq without seeing his sons.

Under the old rules, individuals authorized to visit relatives in Cuba could go there once a year, and more often in the case of family emergencies. They could visit cousins, aunts and uncles, as well as immediate relatives.
(snip/...)

http://www.civilrights.org/issues/human/details.cfm?id=29347

American Journal of Public Health, Vol 87, Issue 1 15-20, Copyright © 1997 by American Public Health Association
JOURNAL ARTICLE


The impact of the economic crisis and the US embargo on health in Cuba
R Garfield and S Santana
Columbia University School of Nursing, New York, NY 10032, USA.

OBJECTIVES: This paper examines the combined effects of a severe economic decline since 1989 and a tightening of the US embargo in 1992 on health and health care in Cuba. METHODS: Data from surveillance systems for nutrition, reportable diseases, and hospital diagnoses were reviewed. These sources were supplemented with utilization data from the national health system and interviews with health leaders. RESULTS: Changes in Cuba include declining nutritional levels, rising rates of infectious diseases and violent death, and a deteriorating public health infrastructure. But despite these threats, mortality levels for children and women remain low. Instead, much of the health impact of the economic decline of Cuba has fallen on adult men and the elderly. CONCLUSIONS: To be consistent with international humanitarian law, embargoes must not impede access to essential humanitarian goods. Yet this embargo has raised the cost of medical supplies and food Rationing, universal access to primary health services, a highly educated population, and preferential access to scarce goods for women and children help protect most Cubans from what otherwise might have been a health disaster.
(snip/)

http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/87/1/15

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Impact of the U.S. Embargo on Health Care in Cuba
by Adrienne Phillips,
former SNMA International Health Co-Chairperson

The U.S. embargo against Cuba has been in place nearly 40 years and stands alone as the longest and most severe set of trade sanctions ever imposed on any one nation. A year ago, when the Pope visited Havana, he condemned the economic blockade as "monstrously immoral." Despite overwhelming international opposition, the U.S. government has continued to tighten the embargo causing severe shortages of food and medical items. This has resulted in hardship and suffering for millions of Cubans. The embargo’s effects intensified when in 1989, Cuba lost its main trading partner- the Soviet Union.

At the start of this year, the Clinton administration took steps to allow more U.S. money, airplanes, food and mail to flow into Cuba "with an eye toward the day when Fidel Castro no longer rules the isolated island."(Weiner, NYT 1/99) Though the future of international relations between our two countries is unclear, there is no doubt that this move to reform U.S. policy toward Cuba is the first step of many. Unfortunately, as steps are made to gradually loosen trade restrictions, significant harm has already been done to those ordinary citizens caught in the middle.
(snip/...)

http://www.snma.org/ihealth/ihealth/cubaembargo.html

>>>> AS you see, that article was written during Clinton's Presidency, and doesn't reflect the horrendous impact of the growing strangulation of Cubans by the _Bush administration.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cuba struggles with shortages of medical supplies

June 13, 1997
Web posted at: 8:57 p.m. EDT (0057 GMT)

From Havana Bureau Chief Lucia Newman

HAVANA (CNN) -- At the Juan Manuel Marquez children's hospital, cancer patients fight for their lives.

A 6-year-old girl's cancer is in remission, yet she is in danger of dying from severe heart complications that doctors say could have been avoided.

She needed access to a drug that protects the heart muscle from the toxic effects of the aggressive chemotherapy treatment she received.

"It is a drug that we've never been able to obtain, because it is not sold to our country. And to try and get it, we must go through a third country," said oncologist Dr. Noel Ward.

"And even then, we've been unsuccessful because there are strict controls over pharmaceutical companies that are subsidiaries of American companies."
(snip/...)

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9706/13/cuba.embargo/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The US attack on Cuba's health
Anthony F. Kirkpatrick, MD, PhD
CMAJ 1997;157:281-4

< résumé >


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Kirkpatrick is from the College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, Fla.
Reprint requests to: Dr. Anthony F. Kirkpatrick, University of South Florida College of Medicine, 12901 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., MDC 59, Tampa FL 33612-4799; rsmith@com1.Med.USF.Edu

© 1997 Canadian Medical Association (text and abstract/résumé)

....For more than 30 years the US government has maintained a crippling trade embargo against Cuba. Although the terms of the embargo have altered with successive administrations, the most important recent developments are the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA) of 1992 and the Helms­Burton Act of 1996. By prohibiting foreign subsidiaries of US companies from trading with Cuba, the CDA reimposes controls that were relaxed in the 1970s. Direct flights between the 2 countries are banned, and aircraft carrying emergency medical supplies for Cuba are prohibited from landing in the US. In addition, foreign vessels are prevented from loading and unloading freight in US harbours for 6 months after having stopped in Cuba. The Helms­Burton Act threatens with prosecution in US courts any foreign investor who has interests involving property in Cuba that was confiscated from a US citizen by the Castro government.1,2

In direct violation of international law, the embargo explicitly prohibits the sale of food to Cuba by US companies and their foreign subsidiaries. Medicines and medical supplies are nominally excluded from the embargo, but the almost insuperable bureaucratic restrictions imposed by the CDA on such shipments lead to inordinate delays, cost increases and limited access to some of the most important medical products. These obstacles amount to a de facto embargo on medical supplies.1,2

In 1992 Cuba was in a severe economic depression, largely resulting from a loss of preferential trade with the Soviet bloc. Cuba turned to US foreign subsidiaries, from whom it received $500­600 million per year in imports -- 90% of which was food and medicine. The American Public Health Association warned the US government that tightening the embargo would lead to the abrupt cessation of this supply of essential goods and result in widespread famine.1 Indeed, 5 months after passage of the CDA, food shortages in Cuba set the scene for the worst epidemic of neurologic disease this century. More than 50 000 people suffered from optic neuropathy, deafness, loss of sensation and pain in the extremities, and a spinal cord disorder that impaired walking and bladder control.1

The tightening of the embargo by the CDA has precipitated the deterioration of what the American Association for World Health (AAWH) describes as a "model primary health care system."2 In this issue Dr. Robin Williams describes the impact of drug and food shortages, equipment failures, and a lack of clean water supplies on health and health care in Cuba (page 291 ). The embargo has lead to a marked decline in surgical services, delays in diagnosis and treatment, a decline in quality of hospital care, and increased rates of water-borne disease, malnutrition, unnecessary suffering and premature death. A Cuban official has described the US stranglehold on food and medicines as amounting to "genocide."3
(snip/...)

http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/cdn_medical_association/cmaj/vol-157/issue-3/0281.htm

Tuesday, 22 Mar. 2005

Thousands of people join Terry Fox run in Cuba
03/21/2005 -- 11:38(GMT+7)

Havana (VNA) - More than 10,000 people, including officials, disabled, canner patients, athletes and locals from Havana and other parts of Cuba joined the Terry Fox Run held on Mar. 20 to promote their health and demonstrate their resolve to combat canner.

Speaking on this occasion, Canadian Ambassador to Cuba Alexandra Burgailistis stressed that Cuba is the second nation in the world after Canada that has organised the charitable event annually.

The run, the eighth of its kind in Havana, was held in honour of a young Canadian who lost a leg to cancer but ran to launch a health exercise movement and contribute to cancer research. It was also to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Cuba-Canada diplomatic ties.--Enditem

http://www.vnagency.com.vn/NewsA.asp?LANGUAGE_ID=2&CATEGORY_ID=34&NEWS_ID=143468

Regardless of what we think of Castro's domestic economic policies, I think that we all agree that the US trade sanctions against Cuba ought to be repealed and the capricious and spiteful travel restrictions that the Boosh regime has imposed on US citizens wishing to visit Cuba ought to be terminated ASAP.

I do hope to travel to a free and independent social democratic Cuba someday--a more prosperous Cuba with a representative democracy that has managed to put its past as a US neo-colony firmly behind it.

:dem: