The Communist Party of Canada condemns the Trump administration’s baseless designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and calls on the Prime Minister and Parliament to reject them and to demand the Biden administration repeal the designation along with Trump’s new sanctions against Cuba.
As everyone knows, Trump’s accusations against Cuba are as accurate and truthful as his claims that he won the November election. His efforts to smear the Cuban government and inflict new economic injury on the Cuban people, are transparent. This drive-by attack is intended to consolidate support among far-right Cuban exiles in Miami for his policies and his failed coup attempt in his own backyard, at home in Washington. In the dying days of Trump’s administration, even prominent members of his own party are worried that he might start a war, or try to use the nuclear codes.
The whole world knows that the US is the terrorist state, sponsoring hundreds of attempts to overthrow the Cuban government, assassinate its leaders, and poison its people using chemical and biological weapons, over the past 60 years.
The whole world knows that the government and people of Cuba have consistently sought to normalize diplomatic and trade relationships with the US, as they have with Canada and many other countries. The Obama administration took modest first steps towards normalization of US-Cuban relations in December 2014, which the Trump administration immediately reversed on taking office.
While Trump has used the past 4 years to terrorize the world, with threats to “wipe out” the Korean Peninsula, as well as other states, leaders, and governments he doesn’t like, the Cuban government has offered – and sent – teams of doctors, nurses, medical equipment and drugs to dozens of countries around the world. This includes Canada, where Indigenous leaders in Manitoba invited Cuban doctors to help them deal with the Covid pandemic on remote Northern reserves. To Canada’s shame, the federal government refused to issue visas to the Cuban medical team who were ready and waiting for the visas to travel.
The PM’s father, Pierre Trudeau, carved out a two-track foreign policy for Canada, which ensured bilateral relations between Canada and socialist Cuba that benefitted both countries, and was very different from the pathological policy pursued by successive US administrations, underscored by the illegal and immoral US blockade of Cuba.
Canada’s relationship with Cuba remained friendly until the current Liberal administration, led by Justin Trudeau began to bend to US demands for a Canadian foreign policy more in line with Washington’s ‘regime-change’ agenda.
The magnitude of that faulty and self-serving decision has now been exposed to the whole world.
The new US administration must reverse Trump’s terrorist designation and sanctions against Cuba, and the Canadian government must insist that they do it. Further, Canada must insist the new US administration finally end its failed blockade, and normalize relations with Cuba.
The Communist Party of Canada stands with the government and the people of Cuba in their decades long struggle to determine their own future and to build socialism, independent of US threats of war, regime change, and economic strangulation. We stand with the nations and peoples of the world fighting for their right to sovereignty and self-determination, and to follow an anti-capitalist and socialist path of development. These are rights guaranteed under the UN Charter, which neither Trump nor Biden can unilaterally violate, nor Canada ignore and still claim to be part of the law-abiding international community of states.
Central Executive Committee
Communist Party of Canada
January 18, 2021