Because of the US economic embargo, Cubans have suffered very low wages
By Zhang Dongya
The UN General Assembly is expected to vote on a resolution Wednesday condemning the US’s 47-year-old embargo on Cuba. It would be the 18th successive year theassembly votes on the resolution.
Carlos Miguel Pereira Hernandez, the Cuban ambassador to China, presented Havana’s appeal to the world body to end economic, commercial and financial blockades imposed by the US in 196. The US enforced the embargo as a war measure based on the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) after Cuban president Fidel Castro expropriated all US businesses when he came to power.
“Nothing has changed through the 10successive US governments other than a tightening of this policy,” Hernandez said.The vote last year was 185 to 3, overwhelmingly supporting Cuba’s appeal and continuing a trend that emerged in recent years. The “nayscame from the US, Israel and Palau.
The ambassador stressed that the embargo was not a bilateral issue between Cuba and the US. “The repeated extraterritorial application of US laws and the persecution of legitimate intrests of companies and citizens of third countries have had significant repercussions on the sovereignty of many countries,” Hernandez said.According to data from the Cuban embassy, as of December 2008, direct damages to the country as a result of the embargo surpassed $96 billion (655.6 billion yuan). Hernandez said the US “deliberately designed to create hunger, illnesses and desperation within the Cuban populace.he Barack Obama administration has adopted several new measures toward Cuba, including the elimination of restrictions on family visits for Cuban residents in the US and the elimination of restrictions on their remittances to relatives in Cuba. The new regulations took effect in September, six months after they were announced.
