Cuba appears together with Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Syria in an executive order published in the US Federal Register, which will be sent to the US Congress, for allegedly not complying with the standards dictated by Washington on the subject. The designation contradicts prestigious intellectuals and political figures in the US who consider that designation as a slander.
One of the most recent examples was the complaint published in The Boston Globe, co-written by Democratic Representative Jim McGovern and Patrick Leahy, former pro tempore president of the Senate, who advocated banishing any attempts to link Cuba with terrorism.
According to them, almost all intelligence officials and diplomats from Democratic and Republican administrations agree that the designation given to Cuba during the last days of Donald Trump’s administration (2017-2021) lacks any merit.
That’s why, President Barack Obama (2009-2017) removed Cuba from the list in 2015, yet more than half of President Joe Biden’s first administration has gone by, and Cuba remains in that category, they claim.
They stated that this means that the private industry, religious groups, non-governmental organizations, universities and even foreign governments are at risk of US retaliation for almost any kind of aid, business, investment or trade with Cuban citizens.
Academic William LeoGrande also echoed this opinion and regretted that the administration has promised for two years to reconsider the designation without ultimately changing anything.
In addition to the financial damage, the designation as a state sponsor of terrorism adds insult to the wound suffered for decades by Cuba, the intellectual said.
He noted that since 1959, Cuba has been the victim of hundreds of paramilitary attacks by exiles, many of whom have been trained and sponsored by the United States during the “Secret War” by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1960s and 1970s.
A fair review of the list will conclude that Cuba does not sponsor terrorism, and removing it from there will open opportunities for better relations on a wide range of issues that benefit both countries, LeoGrande stressed.
The injustice of associating Cuba with any extremist organization is also denounced by hundreds of Cuban residents and friends in solidarity in the United States who gather in different US cities every last Sunday of every month.
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