At the UN, Cuban meetings support against US ‘tyranny’ United Nations News

Tensions between Washington and Havana have escalated in recent months.

Cuba has criticized the US’s “brutal” ban on the island in a debate at the United Nations General Assembly.

“The government of the United States is waging against Cuba a multi-faceted, disproportionate war, which has been going on for almost seventy years now and has become brutal and brutal in the last seven months,” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the UN on Tuesday. blockade is the “public punishment” of the people.

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“Taking care of this brutal crime is also the responsibility of the UN,” he added.

He said the damage caused by the embargo in March 2025 to February 2026 reached $8bn, a seven-fold increase over the same period a year earlier. He added that these figures did not include the “significant impact” of the oil embargo that the US imposed on Cuba in February.

Many organizations around the world, including African and Caribbean countries, expressed their support for Cuba on Tuesday and condemned the US blockade.

Every year since 1992, the General Assembly has passed by a majority a non-binding resolution calling for the lifting of the blockade imposed on Cuba by the US.

Support waned slightly last October, when 165 member states voted in favor – down from 187 the year before – and seven opposed, which was rejected several times.

Tuesday’s vote on the debate showed another potential landslide, with 136 in favor, nine against, and 30 against – including traditional supporters in Germany and Canada.

“There is no American barrier,” US Ambassador Mike Waltz insisted at the event. “The only restraint in Cuba is the guillotine that the government keeps on the heads of its people.”

Regarding the recent talks between Havana and Washington, Rodriguez insisted that “no progress has been made” and there may not be as long as the US authorities “see Cuba as a conquered or defeated enemy, as a colonial asset.”

Other speakers, while criticizing US policy in Cuba, also referred to the role of Havana.

“The worrying situation of the Cuban people is not only because of the ban,” said the European Union ambassador to the UN, Stavros Lambrinidis.

The representative emphasized the need for the authorities to make “political and economic changes” in Cuba, including respect for human rights, while he criticized the cooperation between Havana and Moscow in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said the exchange of arguments at the UN reflects the deep tensions that remain between Havana and Washington.

Under the current blockade, Cuba has been experiencing a lot of pain power cut which has affected the whole country due to the blocking of the oil that comes to the island which was done by the US.

US President Donald Trump ordered an oil embargo in Cuba in January as part of a pressure campaign aimed at ending sixty years of communist rule.

With only one oil tanker from Russia reaching Cuba’s shores since then, the Soviet-era power plant is running out of fuel needed to generate electricity.

Food, drinking water and medicine are also in short supply, and the United Nations has warned of a humanitarian crisis.