Cambodia: Washington's Cuba blockade condemned

At a well-attended press conference on October 25, Cuban ambassador Gilda Lopez Armenteros directed public attention to the upcoming United Nations General Assembly vote on a resolution calling for an end to the United States economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba.

She also condemned the most recent threats by the Bush administration, which has arrogantly declared that it will not "tolerate" Cuba following its own constitutional procedures if Fidel Castro's health prevents him from continuing as Cuba's president.

She quoted from Castro's October 21 response to Bush, which denounced the blockade, US support of terrorism, "your unjust punishment of the five Cuban heroes who denounced the dangers of citizens of the United States and other countries being killed in mid-flight" (the Cuban Five) and "the shameful tortures being carried out in the occupied territory of Guantanamo".

The Cambodian government has consistently supported the repeated UN resolutions calling for an end to the blockade. As Lopez Armenteros noted, Cambodians can understand what the blockade means for Cuba, having themselves been subjected to a similar blockade in the 1980s while the country sought to recover from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime.

From GLW issue 729