Dutch doctors call for Cuba to be removed from US terrorism list

Amsterdam, July 2 (RHC)-- Doctors from the Netherlands and other European countries demanded on Tuesday that US President Joe Biden remove Cuba from the unilateral list of States Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT).

 In a letter to the US president, the organization Cuba-Europe Educational and Scientific Exchange (CEESE) warned of the consequences of this type of measure, which was designed by the White House to increase financial pressure on sovereign nations.

More than the governments, these measures seriously harm the people, especially children, according to a study carried out with colleagues from Italy and the United Kingdom, says the letter signed by Dutch doctor and professor Paul Jonas, who shared it with Prensa Latina.

The specialists published a study in the British Medical Journal in 2021, entitled "Economic sanctions against countries are indiscriminate weapons and should be banned".

The primary care expert from Leiden University Medical Centre and CEESE secretary urged President Biden to take note of the study on behalf of his colleagues.

"We hope that you will take note of the results of our research, because you always claim to support and protect the Cuban people," he stressed.

Cuba was put back on the unilateral States Sponsors of Terrorism list in January 2021, just days before the end of President Donald Trump's term, as part of his policy to tighten the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba for more than six decades, a crusade that Biden has maintained.

The letter warns that by placing Cuba on the list, the US government is harming its own people by preventing scientific cooperation between institutions in the two countries.

Jonas recalled that during the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, Cuba developed vaccines that could be tested and administered in the United States, where the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus killed more than one million people.

The Cuba-Europe Educational and Scientific Exchange doctors noted that Washington's hostility is affecting medical and scientific exchanges between European institutions and Cuba, an example of the extraterritorial scope of the blockade.

"When I am asked why Cuba is on the States Sponsors of Terrorism list, I have no answer, because the inclusion is not based on any evidence," said the signatory of the letter. The text supports decisions rejecting the blockade and calling for its lifting, including those adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in annual resolutions since 1992. (Source: Prensa Latina)