Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez rejected the lies used by the United States to justify its imposition of the blockade against his country today, and denied that this policy is intended to benefit the people of the island.
 
Speaking at the UN General Assembly debate on the resolution presented annually by the Caribbean nation to condemn the hostile US policy, he said that year after year, the US delegation in that forum claims, with high doses of cynicism, that its government supports the Cuban people.
 
"Can anyone believe such a statement?" the Foreign Minister questioned, and accused the US administration of lying and falsifying data "on alleged licenses for operations of sales of medicines and food to Cuba, which hardly ever come to fruition'."
 
The US delegation should explain in this Assembly the conditions that it imposes on Cuban purchases: there is no access to credits, payments must be made in cash and in advance, banks refuse to handle Cuban transactions, he detailed.
 
"Who in the world trades under these conditions?" the head of Cuban diplomacy emphasized, noting that the successful and effective Cuban social model ensures its citizens equal opportunities, equity and social justice, despite external hostility and coercion.
 
In his speech before the multilateral agency, Rodríguez mentioned specific cases of Cubans directly impacted by the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington for almost 60 years.
 
As a consequence of that policy, Bryan Gómez Santisteban, aged 16, and Leydis Posada Cañizares, aged 19, cannot access internal prostheses, and have to undergo frequent surgeries to replace temporary ones, the minister explained.
 
Rodríguez pointed out that the impossibility of accessing these prostheses is due to the fact that they are produced by the American company Stryker.
 
Likewise, the blockade makes it impossible to access novel medicines for the treatment of cancer. Rodríguez offered the example of the case of Mayra Lazus Roque, aged 57, a renal cancer patient, who could not be treated with the optimal drug, Sunitinib, as it is only produced by the US company Pfizer.
 
The blockade causes incalculable humanitarian damage, constitutes a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of human rights, the Cuban minister stressed.