A Solidarity Meeting for Democracy and against Neoliberalism with over 1500 participants condemned the US economic, financial and trade blockade against Cuba and specially the harsh hostility of the Trump administration.
Leaders of left-wing organizations, progressive movements, labor unions, youth and students’ federations, intellectuals and academics from 90 nations attended the huge gathering that took place in Havana over the weekend.
In a statement read by the executive director of Pastors for Peace, Gail Walker, attendees repudiated the full application of the Helms-Burton Act.
They also voiced their support for the Cuban resolution calling for the end of the economic siege Havana has presented since 1992 at the United Nations General Assembly.
They rejected attacks by Washington and its allies on Cuba’s international medical cooperation program, ‘one of the most noble expressions of solidarity and internationalist spirit of the Cuban Revolution,’ said the American religious leader.
Participants lashed out, too, Washington’s increasing aggression against the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro, demanded the immediate release of Inacio Lula da Silva from his political incarceration and called to respect the elections in Bolivia that gave Evo Morales five more years as president.
In closing the meeting, President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, said that Cuba will always welcome those who defend peace and solidarity, and called for rejecting the lies the US Government wields to dominate nations.
The Head of State emphasized that with lies, they have attacked Cuba for years, invaded nations, destroyed towns, and pushed entire regions backwards keeping nations from developing.
He strongly criticized the Trump administration for attacking Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the progressive leadership of Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and social, left movements around the world, particularly in Latin America.
He condemned Washington’s strategy to use the Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) and the Organization of American States as instruments of political pressure to support oligarchies and protect neoliberalism.
Previously, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro addressed the gathering to voice his and Venezuela’s support for the Chilean people who rose against the excluding, generative policies of injustice and inequality policies capitalism generates.
Maduro called to build a profoundly humanistic and revolutionary alternative project.
He repudiated, too, actions by the Latin American right-wing to destabilize countries such as Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua.
On Bolivia specifically, he commented that there is a right-wing segment contaminated with the hatred of racism, and conveyed congratulation for President Evo Morales’ elections win.
Cuban president remarked that his people will continue to confront the United States economic, commercial and financial blockade in all fields with work, creativity, resistance and without renouncing development.
‘Cuba’s most valuable resource is its people: imaginative, enterprising, brave and creative,’ the president said on closing the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Conference, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism, held in Havana.
Diaz-Canel stressed that the international community’s demand for an end to the blockade had fallen on deaf ears in Washington.
‘Our Homeland today suffers the criminal tightening of the blockade, the strengthening of an immoral and illegal policy that has been practically unanimously condemned by the United Nations General Assembly for more than 30 years, and the United States has not reacted to the global demand,’ he noted.
He also condemned the imperialist intervention in Syria, and demanded respect for that country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Diaz-Canel called for the continuation of inter-Korean dialogue and an end to the sanctions imposed on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and urged to comply with the peace process in Colombia. (PL)
