PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s move to remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism is an important step forward in our efforts to forge a more constructive relationship with Cuba.
The United States has a unique opportunity to begin a fresh chapter with Cuba.
Obama’s announcement clears the way for the United States and Cuba to re-establish diplomatic relations and strengthen people-to-people ties between our two countries.
There is need for more constructive and direct engagement between international neighbours, especially when it comes to issues of human rights and the rule of law.
It is not just Cuba that can learn a thing or two from America, but America stands to gain from having cordial relations with its neighbour.
I note that following Obama’s announcement, Senator Ben Cardin, who is the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was quick to make a press statement calling on Cuba to use the opportunity to stop, “violating human rights, detaining political dissidents and harbouring American fugitives wanted for violent crimes, especially the murder of US law enforcement officers”.
The hostility against Cuba by the American Establishment can only be explained and understood when one looks at Cuba and its government through the eyes of white capitalist America.
Big business, which in essence drives American political systems, has never embraced the notion that government should interfere in business operations and as such, matters such as nationalisation of national resources and economic empowerment of indigenous people are abhorred as they cut into any opportunities for earning profit through exploitation.
Opposition elements understand the complexities of the relationship between American politicians and big business and have used it vigorously to rally continued support for sanctions against, and alienation of Cuba and the Castro Government.
In a hearing by the Sub-committee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organisations on February 5 2015, one Cuban leader of the Cuban Resistance, Sara Marta Fonseca, testified that, “Ending the US embargo will benefit only the Castro Regime.
“The Castro family ultimately owns and controls the country’s economic life.
“The Castro family monopolises Cuban political and economic life.
“Their permanence in power will benefit only them, and not the Cuban people. We ask for support for the Cuban Resistance, and for the Agreement for Democracy in Cuba, a consensus document of the Resistance which lays out a ten-point programme for true democratic change in Cuba.
“It is in this way that the United States can aid the Cuban people in building a new democratic nation.”
US President, Obama and Cuba’s Raul Castro held a meeting at the first Summit of the Americas in Panama, making that meeting the first formal talks between the two countries’ leaders in more than half a century.
The US broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1959 after Fidel Castro and his brother Raul led a revolution toppling US-backed President Fulgencio Batista.
The Castros established a revolutionary socialist state with close ties to the Soviet Union.
The distance between Cuba and the United States is about 145 kilometres, so one can imagine how disturbing it is that the nations’ two leaders have been freezing each other at international conferences.
In fact before the inauguration of the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama City, on Friday April 10 2015, President Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro in the presence of United Nations (UN) Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon and this made headlines.
The last time the two shook hands was when they met briefly in 2013 during the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.
At least Obama had the decency to greet President Castro, unlike his predecessor, George Bush, who ran away from President Robert Mugabe, at Pope John Paul II’s funeral, so as to not greet him.
And yet had the Pope been alive and been afforded the opportunity to be in the same room with the two men, he would have called for dialogue between President Mugabe and President Bush.
Unfortunately, as things seem to be improving with Cuba, America has again set its sight on Venezuela.
The tensions arose last month when Obama imposed sanctions against a group of Venezuelan officials accused of human rights abuses, calling the situation a ‘national emergency’ and declaring Venezuela a national security threat to the US.
The decisions have been widely condemned by a regional group of South American nations, who called them “unilateral coercive measures against International Law.”