Biden can remove this designation with the stroke of his pen, stated the text signed by renowned US musician Roger Waters, Indian historian, editor and journalist Vijay Prashad, and Manolo de los Santos, founder and co-director of The People’s Forum movement.
They warned that such inclusion “deeply harms the ability of the Cuban Government and its people to carry out the basic functions of life.” “Cuba has been, since 1959, a victim of acts of terrorism by the United States, including an attempted invasion on Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs), in central Cuba, in 1961 and repeated assassination attempts against its leaders, 638 times against Fidel Castro, they stated.
In addition, the Caribbean nation “has a long history of medical internationalism, with Cuban doctors and medicines being a familiar sight from Pakistan to Peru,” the authors added.
Cuba was not in the list of state sponsors of terrorism since 2015, when President Barack Obama removed the country from that list, to which it was first added in 1982 by then-President Ronald Reagan, they noted.
However, “in his last week in office, and days before Joe Biden was inaugurated to replace him, former President Donald Trump put Cuba back in the list on January 12, 2021,” they emphasized.
There was no new evidence that anything had changed since 2015, which showed that Trump’s actions were purely political, Waters, Prashad and De los Santos wrote.
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