In a message sent to the Second International Conference against Coercive Measures, being held in Geneva, the president explained that the recent arrival of a Russian oil tanker with 100,000 tons of fuel was an extraordinary event due to the US threat to sanction any country that trades hydrocarbons with Cuba.

Diaz-Canel detailed that the policy of suffocation also affects 16,000 patients requiring radiotherapy and 2,888 patients on hemodialysis, whose lives are endangered by the disruption of these services due to energy instability.

The head of state added that the prolonged power outages are affecting water and gas supplies, paralyzing transportation and food production, and have forced schools and universities to adopt hybrid learning models.

“By preventing the arrival of fuel, the United States government is flagrantly violating the human rights of an entire people,” he stated in the text read at the Swiss forum, where he described this policy as part of an economic war that has lasted more than 60 years and is designed to provoke social unrest.

The Cuban president questioned whether the international community will allow a return to “times of subservience and barbarism,” and demanded that the United Nations create a working group within the Human Rights Council and adopt a legally binding instrument that compels the lifting of the blockade and demands accountability.

Finally, he thanked the UN High Commissioner and experts for their solidarity and affirmed that the Cuban people will defend “every inch of their homeland” against the “voracious appetite of the empire.”

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