Cuba has the right to defend itself, says activist in the US

Washington, Feb. 27.- This is Cuba's reality today: defending itself from terrorists based in the United States while that country's government tries to strangle its economy with a brutal blockade, activist Cheryl LaBash told Prensa Latina.

Condemning the armed incursion that occurred on the morning of February 25 of a speedboat with Florida registration in Cuban territorial waters, the co-chair of the National Network on Cuba (NNOC) recalled the long history of terrorist actions organized and financed from US territory for decades.

I encourage everyone who travels to Cuba - she said - to visit the Memorial de la Denuncia in Havana to learn how much the Cuban people have suffered from these aggressions, including speedboats with armed individuals that attacked beaches and tourist areas.

She recalled that the 1990s witnessed a series of terrorist attacks in Cuba, driven by counter-revolutionary groups. One of those violent acts, in 1997, killed the young Italian Fabio di Celmo when a bomb exploded in a hotel in the Cuban capital.

LaBash denounced that, however, "United States forces have killed more than 100 Caribbeans in small boats, even killing anyone who survives."

"Fishermen in the boats are not questioned, they are simply bombed," added the co-chair of the NNOC, a coalition of more than 60 organizations.

But the United States Government "remains judge and executioner," said LaBash, reiterating the demand, which has become a collective cry, that Cuba be removed from the unilateral List of State Sponsors of Terrorism and "let the true terrorist stand up!" she indicated.

She also referred to the executive order that President Donald Trump issued on January 29, which she considered "an open declaration of war against the Cuban people."

With this coercive measure "they are going to impose collective punishment on the Cuban people, trying to force them to rebel against their government and the socialist programs that have meant so much, not only for Cuba but for the rest of the world," she stated.

For its part, an NNOC statement condemned the new act of aggression and the "armed provocations against a sovereign nation that endanger lives, embolden reckless actors, intensify tensions in the Caribbean and undermine regional stability," it highlighted.

This incident must be understood - the coalition noted - in the broader context of more than six decades of US hostility towards Cuba, which has deliberately restricted that country's access to fuel, banking and world trade in an effort to force a political surrender.

"Cuba has the right to defend its territorial waters and protect its sovereignty," the NNOC stressed. (PL) (Photo: Taken from the Internet)