Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel addresses the general debate of the UN General Assembly via virtual speech from Havana, Cuba Sept. 22, 2020. 

By Gary Raynaldo   DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

UNITED  NATIONS  –  NEW YORK – Addressing the UN General Assembly’s annual general debate, President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez said that while the coronavirus pandemic hit all countries and all people around the world, the resulting multidimensional crisis clearly showed the “great mistake of the dehumanized policies fully imposed by the market dictatorship.”

“The sought-after right of humanity to live in peace and security, with justice and freedom, the basis for unity among nations, is constantly under threat. Over 1.9 trillion dollars are being squandered today in a senseless arms race promoted by the aggressive and war-mongering policies of imperialism, whose leader is the present government of the US, which accounts for 38 percent of the global military expenditure.”

-Cuba President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez

“We are referring to a markedly aggressive and morally corrupt regime that despises and attacks multilateralism, uses financial blackmailing in its relations with UN system agencies and that, in a show of unprecedented overbearance, has withdrawn from the World Health Organization, UNESCO and the Human Rights Council. Paradoxically, the country where the UN headquarters is located is also staying away from fundamental international treaties such as the Paris Agreement on climate change; it rejects the nuclear agreement with Iran reached by consensus; it promotes trade wars; it ends its commitment with international disarmament control instruments; it militarizes cyberspace; it expands coercion and unilateral sanctions against those who do not bend to its designs and sponsors the forcible overthrow of sovereign governments through non-conventional war methods.”

Cuba’s President added that “Unlike excluding neoliberalism, which puts aside and discards millions of human beings and condemns them to survive on the leftovers from the banquet of the richest one per cent, the COVID-19 virus does not discriminate between them,” he said, adding that the the pandemic’s socio-economic effects would be lethal among the most vulnerable – the poorest.  

Cuba To Send 3,700 Medical Brigade Workers To 39 countries Hit By COVID-19

Photo: @CubacooperaGh /  telesurenglish.net/  Cuban doctors have been sent to several countries around the world to help fight the coronavirus

In solidarity with other nations and the humanistic vocation of its people, Cuba will be sending over 3,700 cooperation workers, distributed in 46 medical brigades, to 39 countries and territories hit by COVID-19, the Cuban President said.

The Cuban President also denounced the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed against his country by the Government of the United States; and starting in 2019, its efforts to deprive the people of Cuba the possibility to buy fuel they need for their everyday activities, “measures that violate international law”.

“The US government has intensified in particular its harassment of Cuban financial transactions and, beginning in 2019, it has been adopting measures that violate international law to deprive the Cuban people of the possibility to buy fuels they need for their everyday activities and for their development. So as to damage and demonize the Cuban Revolution and others it defines as adversaries, the US has been publishing spurious lists having no legitimacy by which it abrogates itself the right to impose unilateral coercive measures and unfounded qualifications on the world. Every week, that government issues statements against Cuba or imposes new restrictions.”

-Cuba President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez