US organization promotes campaign to remove Cuba from terrorism list

Havana, March 25 (RHC)  Members of the New York chapter of the National Conference of Black Lawyers are today promoting a campaign in the United States calling on President Joe Biden to remove Cuba from the list of sponsors of terrorism.

The promoters of the Initiative Joan P. Gibbs and Rosemari Mealy expressed that Biden's decision to maintain that designation goes against the repeated rejection of the General Assembly of the United Nations to the blockade against the Cuba during the last 30 years.

Removing Cuba from that illegal and unilateral list will not put an end to the devastating commercial, economic and financial restrictions imposed under the US blockade of more than 60 years, but it could ease the reinforcement of that hostile policy, they indicated.

They argued that, among other things, inclusion in that relationship makes it difficult for Cuba to carry out international transactions or obtain loans for food, medicine and essential infrastructure for its people.

The text, published in the Amsterdam News newspaper, recalled that while the Democrat was campaigning for the presidency "he promised to reverse the draconian sanctions imposed on Cuba" by Donald Trump (2017-2021).

However, Biden continued "with most of Trump's nearly 250 sanctions, including the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism that he took during his final days in office," they added.

The solidarity activists also pointed out that despite the tight siege and the permanence on that list, Cuba continues to have a higher life expectancy, lower infant and maternal mortality, better health outcomes, higher literacy, more education and less violence than the United States.

For example, a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2020 the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women was 55.3 per 100,000 live births, or 2.9 times the rate for non-Hispanic whites, added Gibbs and Mealy.

Biden could end this designation with a stroke of the pen, they affirmed when warning that to do so the president would not need to have Congress.

In a series of actions held on March 14 and 15 in New York, hundreds of activists from all over the United States made the same claim to Biden, commenting when anticipating that a massive demonstration in front of the White House would follow on March 25. (Source: Prensa Latina)