US tries to block Cuba from depositing dollars in foreign banks
Campaign News | Tuesday, 8 June 2004
Cuba denounces new US attempts to block island?s income
The Cuban government has revealed that the Bush administration is trying to block Cuba from depositing dollars in foreign banks in order to affect its tourist industry and prevent it from purchasing foreign medicines and food.
Below is the Cuban government's note published in the national media on Tuesday, June 8th:
Cuba denounces US government’s new and cowardly move
THE forceful response by our people to Bush’s brutal measures has disconcerted his ultra-right administration and his unconditional servants in the Miami mafia.
They do not know what to say or what not to say and falling apart with contradictory and incoherent explanations in an attempt to confuse and appease the growing voices who will not allow a group of corrupt fascists to interfere in something as personal and sacred as family relations and the normal activities that sustain them, such as visits and economic help, among others.
Nevertheless, the momentary confusion and incertitude observed in the conduct of U.S. administration officials and their unconditional followers in Miami, provoked by the exceptional indignation fuelled by its new measures in Cuba and in the United States itself, should not be any reason for us to drop our guard.
It is evident that the fascists are hatching new stratagems by using alternative formulas to obtain their dirty ends of intensifying the economic siege of our country, without exposing themselves to harsh criticism and condemnation, both in Cuba and other parts of the world.
In this context, we have seen how in recent days the ultra-right in the Bush administration are clearly taking steps directed at blocking the entry into our country of income derived from tourism and other services and reducing to zero the possibility of Cubans in the United States sending remittances to family members on the island, by using the most perverse, cunning and hypocritical method imaginable: simply preventing Cuba from depositing dollars obtained from sales in the hard-currency stores, tourism-related activities and other commercial services in foreign banks Thus, Cuba would be unable to utilize that income to purchase medicines or foodstuffs, or to import necessary supplies for those stores, where persons receiving remittances from families resident in the United States buy those products.
With that crafty proposition, the U.S. government is pressuring foreign banks not to accept funds whose origins are totally legal and honest from Cuba. Moreover, it is promoting in the terrorist Miami mafia press the repugnant infamy that such funds could be related to activities that are energetically combated by our country, such as money laundering and drug trafficking.
Those actions are even more outrageous bearing in mind that the sole reason that tourists visiting Cuba have to use cash is that the U.S. blockade prevents them from using credit cards of travelers’ checks from U.S. banks or other financial agencies controlling that market. Moreover, only one U.S. company has been granted a license to handle remittances to Cuba via the banking system, hence currently, Cubans resident abroad are being subjected to a veritable bearing the cross to send economic help to their relatives; so much so that in the end they are forced to send it in cash. Constant persecution and threats against those sending money to their families in Cuba from the United States contributes to them preferring to do it in cash in order to avoid documentary evidence that would subject them to persecution by the U.S. authorities and violent action by terrorists resident in Miami.
A more cynical and perverse formula is inconceivable: the United States and its criminal blockade is forcing a situation where the sending of remittances and payments by foreign visitors in Cuba have to be effected in cash, and now, with gross pressure, trying to prevent Cuba from utilizing that cash to pay for its imports.
Two days ago, on leaving his post as U.S. government special envoy for the Western Hemisphere, bandit Otto Reich cynically stated that the some of the anti-Cuba measures recently adopted are being implemented and others are in process. Many of them require the establishment of regulations and certain bureaucratic aspects and lawyers and other government officials, and many others are scheduled for adoption.
Cuba has accumulated too much experience in the last 40 years of struggle to be surprised at the empire’s repugnant plans.
In the face of this new and cowardly measure, we charge before the Cuban people, before Cubans resident in the United States, before the U.S. people and before the rest of the peoples of the world that, in addition to family remittances, the U.S. government is working flat out to deprive Cuba of a significant part of its income from tourism and other commercial services.
No former U.S. administration has gone to such extremes, which clearly indicates that for the ultra-fascist right currently exercising power in the United States there are no scruples or ethics of any kind in its fanatical obsession of achieving the impossible: bringing the Cuban people to their knees.
All its stratagems are condemned to failure. With the firmness and serenity of always, our heroic people will fight and win against a powerful but contemptible and cowardly enemy, truly despised for its genocide policy and its Nazi-fascist methods.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/junio/mar8/24nota.html
