US and Cuba clash at UN over human rights and 60 year-old trade embargo
The event, held at the UN building, ended with a heated exchange as Cuban ambassador Ernesto Soberón Guzmán and other Cuban representatives shouted at US ambassador Mike Waltz while he was leaving. The United States and Cuba clashed at the United Nations on Monday after a US-hosted event brought together Cuban dissidents to discuss alleged human rights abuses by the nation’s government.
The vote is expected on October 27-28. The non-binding resolution has been passed by wide margins every year since 1992, but only the US Congress can lift the embargo. Washington has maintained a trade embargo on the island for more than 60 years, with US President Donald Trump’s administration increasing pressure on the country after using the military in January to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Speaking to reporters in New York, Waltz accused Cuban diplomats of harassing and intimidating former political prisoners who had recently been released, as well as other people attending the event.
“I hope you…noted the so-called diplomats from the Cuban embassy here that we allow here by dint of treaty, harassing, yelling, intimidating, and filming not only our just released former political prisoners but others,” Waltz said. “Year after year, the Cuban regime comes to the General Assembly and propagates a lie through its annual resolution…It uses excuse after excuse to justify its oppression, to justify the misery of the Cuban people, and what we are doing here at the US mission to the UN is exposing those lies,” he said. Speaking at an impromptu gathering outside the US meeting with dissidents, he said the restrictions amounted to collective punishment. They are inflicting immense suffering upon the whole population of a peaceful nation,” Guzmán said. Last month, Trump told the UN that Cuba was a failed state and said freedom would be coming to the island.
The incident comes ahead of a UN General Assembly vote on a resolution calling for an end to the US trade embargo on Cuba. He also accused the Cuban government of using the annual UN resolution to defend its actions and hide the suffering of its people. Guzmán, meanwhile, accused Washington of worsening the hardships faced by ordinary Cubans through its sanctions. “The US is acting as an international delinquent, enforcing collective punishment on the people of Cuba. The exchange comes as tensions between the two countries grow amid a US-imposed oil blockade on Cuba. Cuba has blamed US sanctions for its deepening economic crisis, which has brought shortages of basic goods, failing infrastructure and runaway inflation. The country is facing its worst economic downturn in decades. The country’s crisis has also affected its power supply. Cuba’s electrical grid suffered a total collapse last month, leaving millions of people without electricity. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.