In a letter to the US president, the Cuba-Europe Educational and Scientific Exchange (CEESE) organization warned about the impact of this type of measures, conceived by the White House to increase financial pressure on sovereign nations.
More than governments, these actions severely harm the people, especially children, according to a research conducted along with colleagues from Italy and the United Kingdom, says the letter, signed by Dutch Doctor and Professor Paul Jonas, who shared it with Prensa Latina.
The specialists published a study entitled “Economic Sanctions on Countries are Indiscriminate Weapons and Should Be Banned” in the British Medical Journal in 2021.
The primary care expert from Leiden University Medical Center and CEESE secretary urged President Biden on behalf of his colleagues to pay attention to the study.
“We hope that you will take note of the results of our research, because you always claim to support and protect the Cuban people,” he stressed.
Cuba was included again on the unilateral SSOT list in January 2021, just a few days before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, as part of his policy to tighten the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba for over six decades, a crusade that Biden has maintained.
The letter warns that with Cuba’s presence on that list, the US Government harms its own people by hindering scientific cooperation between institutions from both countries.
Jonas recalled that during the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic, Cuba developed vaccines that could be tested and administered in the US, where the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus killed more than one million people.
The medical professionals from the CEESE noted that Washington’s hostility affects medical and scientific exchange between European institutions and Cuba, in an example of the extraterritorial scope of the blockade.
“When I am asked why Cuba is on the SSOT list, I do not have an answer, because the inclusion is not based on any evidence,” the signatory of the letter said.
The text supports decisions that reject the blockade and call for its lifting, among them those issued by the United Nations General Assembly in annual resolutions dating back to 1992.
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