Boston. In an open letter, several Democratic Congressmen have called on their colleague, US President Joe Biden, to remove Cuba from the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” (SSOT).
The initiative came from Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern.
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump added Cuba to the list at the end of his term in office and just a week before Biden took office in January 2021.
The MPs describe this measure as Trump’s “revenge action” and are now also very angry with Biden because he promised during the election campaign to have the sanctions against Cuba and the inclusion in the SSOT list reviewed, withdrawn or defused. MEPs and many other observers assumed that the relevant six-month review process would begin immediately. Now they learned – exactly three years after Biden took office – that, contrary to previous claims, this review had not yet begun.
In fact, top officials in the Trump and Biden administrations have called Cuba’s addition to the terror list “absurd.” Colin Powell’s former chief of staff called it “a fiction that we created to support the rationale for the blockade.”
Now the Democratic MPs pointed out the absurdity that “Cuba and the USA have a functioning bilateral cooperation agreement to combat terrorism.”
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The listing leads to massive restrictions for Cuba, for example in access to international financial markets, and hinders the ability to do business with other countries and entities. The consequences are a lack of foreign exchange, a backlog of investments, and a shortage of essential raw materials, industrial goods and everyday products.
The MEPs’ letter points out that while there are other reasons for Cuba’s current economic crisis, “a significant factor is undoubtedly the restrictions and sanctions to which international financial institutions and other bodies are subject because Cuba is on the SSOT list. ( …) From the poorest and most vulnerable to the struggling private sector to religious, humanitarian and cultural actors, the Cuban people are suffering the worst deprivation in a long time – everyone is suffering.”
Last Thursday, Tennessee House of Representatives member Steve Cohen, of the Democratic Party, also sent a letter to Biden recommending that he initiate the process to review and revoke Cuba’s inclusion on the SSOT list. “Lifting sanctions does not represent an endorsement of the Cuban government’s policies, but rather an acknowledgment of the fact that the current approach has failed the Cuban people,” Cohen said.
The pressure against the SSOT list is currently increasing not only in domestic policy but also in foreign policy. The presidents of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lobbied the US government to delist Cuba. In the UN vote in November, the entire US blockade policy against Cuba was clearly rejected with 187 votes to two.
Meanwhile, the “Get Cuba #OFFTHELIST” campaign is currently underway in US civil society.