Havana, Feb 23 (RHC) The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and president of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel said Thursday that the permanence of the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo, against the will of the people, is a theft of national sovereignty.

From his Twitter profile, the president recalled that 120 years ago the treaty was signed allowing the northern nation to establish the military site in eastern Cuba, the first naval base installed by the U.S. government outside its borders.

The head of state said that because of its use as a lawless prison, the base also hurts other nations.

The installation was the result of an Agreement for the Coal and Naval Stations, signed on February 23, 1903, between the governments of the United States and Cuba, in circumstances in which the latter had practically no independence, due to the imposition of the Platt Amendment (1901).

With an area of 117.6 square kilometers of Cuba's national territory, the Guantanamo Naval Base began operations in December 1903 and was, in the first half of the 20th century, the training and preparation scenario for the U.S. fleet.

After the triumph of the Revolution (January 1, 1959), the enclave became a platform for permanent aggression against the country, through the support of counterrevolutionary organizations and networks of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which received from there all the necessary material support.

"Eight thousand 288 violations have been committed at that US naval base: almost six thousand corresponding to air space and more than a thousand to maritime navigation", said José Sánchez Guerra, historian of the city of Guantánamo.

In 2002, a detention center was established for prisoners accused of terrorism, which in 2003 already housed 700 inmates, most of them detained in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion.

According to United Nations human rights experts, it is the site of relentless and ongoing violations of the detainees' fundamental rights.

Since its opening and until 2021, nine detainees have died in custody there, two of natural causes and, according to reports, seven committed suicide.

February 23 is the International Day of Struggle against Foreign Military Bases of the United States and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), instituted five years ago in Dublin, Ireland. (Source: ACN)