Brasilia, September 19 (RHC)-- Young people from the Levante Popular da Juventude (Popular Youth Uprising) movement organized this Monday morning a demonstration in front of the U.S. consulate in Rio de Janeiro, whose objective was to demand the removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. 

"For decades, the U.S. government has adopted a hostile policy, seeking to isolate the Cuban people through various sanctions. At the height of the pandemic, in 2021, the Trump administration reinforced the blockade with 243 new sanctions and returned Cuba to the State Sponsors of Terrorism List."

"The decision to include or exclude a State from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism rests exclusively with the President of the United States and can be made at any time."  "That is why, with the audacity of youth, Levante occupies the US Consulate because of its commitment to the internationalist struggle, to the struggle of the Latin American peoples against the tentacles of imperialism and to the legacy of the Cuban revolution," argues the movement in a statement published on the social network Facebook. 

For youth activist and vice president of the National Union of Students (UNE), Daiane Araújo, Cuba is "victim of an illegal embargo and is only on the list of countries that support terrorism because the United States is against the self-determination of peoples."  "Cuba is an example of strength, humanism and solidarity around the world, defender of the sovereignty of peoples around the world and of social justice."

In the protest, demonstrators carried small coffins where outside the name of each of the countries in which the United States has intervened was read.  

Last Saturday, during the G77+China summit in Havana, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reproached the sanctions imposed by the United States on Cuba, in the largest event of countries of the Global South within the United Nations.