Image by Soonha Jo.

The UN General Assembly’s August 25 session on global health and foreign policy heard from Cuban Ambassador Yuri Gala López. Cuba’s top UN official mentioned that, “we have helped to prepare tens of thousands of doctors from various countries of the Global South.” He denounced U.S. inclusion of Cuba on its list of State Sponsors of Terrorism and then turned to “the slanderous U.S. campaign directed at our medical services.”

“Selfishness must be banished from international relations, and unilateral coercive measures that negatively impact the enjoyment of the right to health must be eliminated,” he insisted. But his generalities leave unsaid the anti-human, cruel, and cynical nature of a new mode of U.S. attack on Cuba. Now the U.S. indicts Cuba for taking healthcare to the world, for practicing international solidarity.

We urge readers to sign a petition demanding that the current U.S. assault on Cuba’s medical missions stop. The Bay Area Cuba Solidarity Network and the US-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition collaborated in presenting the petition.

It calls upon the U.S. government to end “the U.S. slander campaign against Cuba’s medical brigades” and remove “visa restrictions on countries that contract with the brigades for much-needed healthcare services.” The petition with its signatures will be delivered to elected officials of the U.S. government and to delegations of the various countries belonging to the UN General Assembly.

What follows here is advocacy in the form of basic information about Cuba’s international medical solidarity and about U.S. anti-Cuban hostility that would bring down even the most beneficent of human undertakings. The report concludes with a link allowing readers to sign the petition.

From the time of Cuban national hero José Martí (1853-1895), Cuba’s Revolution has attended to the aspirations of oppressed peoples everywhere.........

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