Barbados Ambassador calls for end to alleged ‘Zone of Peace’ violations

Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM David Comissiong is calling on the United States government to dismantle, once and for all, its 63-year-old illegal economic blockade of Cuba.

Speaking on Monday at a ceremony to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the downing of the Cubana Airliner off Barbados on October 6, 1976, and the third year of the CARICOM-Cuba Day Against Terrorism, Ambassador Comissiong also described as fraudulent and ridiculous, the US designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“I, therefore, wish to raise my voice today and to demand — on behalf of the Government and people of Barbados, and indeed, on behalf of the entire Caribbean Community — that the Government of the United States of America must terminate its illegal blockade of Cuba and remove Cuba from the US State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism,” he urged.

“Indeed,” the ambassador added, “I want to remind the government of the USA that every single year for the last 32 years, the overwhelming majority of the nations of the world gather at the United Nations and pass a resolution that affirms that the US blockade of Cuba is illegal and that it must be terminated.”

“President Trump, do the right and honourable thing. Terminate the illegal blockade of Cuba, and remove Cuba from its thoroughly undeserved placement on your State Department’s List of Sponsors of Terrorism,” he asserted.

Comissiong contended that identifying Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism serves to reinforce the effects of the illegal US blockade by increasing difficulties for Cuba to engage in international trade, to carry out financial operations, and to acquire basic staples for its people.

“But as we all know, far from being a perpetrator or sponsor of terrorism, Cuba has in fact been the victim of no less than 713 acts of terrorism, the vast majority of which have been organised, financed, and executed by persons or organisations that are based in or that find refuge in the territory of the United States of America,” the Barbados diplomat pointed out.

He also drew the Trump administration’s attention to the January 2014 Zone of Peace Declaration, which was unanimously adopted in Havana, Cuba, by the member states of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) — a hemisphere-wide organisation which includes all of the independent nations of the Caribbean and the Americas, except for the United States of America and Canada.

“True to the United Nations’ stipulation,” Comissiong said, “our Governments looked to the Charter of the United Nations for additional principles to flesh out the International Law concept of the Caribbean being a Zone of Peace and enunciated, among other things, a ‘permanent commitment’ to solve disputes through peaceful means ‘with the aim of uprooting forever the threat or use of force in our region.’”

He noted that the Zone of Peace also calls for the commitment not to intervene, directly or indirectly, in the internal affairs of any other State and to observe the principles of national sovereignty, equal rights and self- determination of peoples; and a commitment “to fully respect the inalienable right of every State to choose its political, economic, social and cultural system, as an essential condition to ensure peaceful coexistence among nations.”

“It is therefore precisely these ‘Zone of Peace’ principles that our CARICOM governments need to look to for guidance when we are confronted with the phenomenon of US warships and a US nuclear sub-marine sailing into the waters of the Southern Caribbean, targeting Venezuela, and blowing alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers into oblivion without any process of interdiction, arrest, trial, conviction or sentence.

“This is a clear violation of the concept of our Caribbean being a Zone of Peace,” Ambassador Comissiong declared.

(EJ)