Havana, March 13 (RHC) Retired Colonel Ann Wright, from the United States Army, demanded the closure of the naval base that the US Government keeps on a territory illegally occupied in Guantanamo, eastern Cuba.

The renowned pacifist and friend of Cuba asked to include her request in the final declaration of the 3rd International US-CUBA Normalization Conference, held in New York over the weekend.

The event brought together friends, intellectuals, artists, and personalities from different US areas, Puerto Rico and Canada, who met at the New York Fordham University to demand the end of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed on Cuba by the White House since 1962.

On a visit to Havana in 2015, the former State Department official said that as a retired colonel and former diplomat, she wanted to “apologize and ask for the Cuban people’s forgiveness for the US actions that have given Guantanamo such a painful and negative meaning.”

Wright resigned from her position in that federal government post in 2003 due to her disagreement with the Iraq war and was part of a delegation of 148 US citizens who traveled to Cuba under the auspices of Code Pink, a pacifist organization.

At the time, she affirmed that the US people are on the side of the Cuban people to close the illegal prison on the base and to end the blockade “once and for all.”

The detention center in Guantanamo is considered by not a few analysts the worst face of the United States and they have described it as a “black hole” where human rights are violated.

The Guantanamo naval base covers an area of 117.6 square kilometers of Cuba’s national territory, usurped in 1903 against the will of the Cuban people. (Source: PL)