New U.S. measure against Cuba: security or suffocation?
- Written by Redacción ¡ahora!
- Published in Opinion
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Under the pretext of ensuring maritime security and law enforcement, the U.S. Federal Register announced the imposition of new conditions for the entry of ships from Cuba, effective from April 2 on.
“These come from an act of the U.S. Congress to authorize Defense expenditures in 2024, which included an amendment by anti-Cuban legislators Carlos Giménez Díaz-Balart and María Elvira Salazar, approved without debate and by deceptive methods,” Rodney González Maestrey, director of Legal Affairs and Analysis of the U.S. General Directorate of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, told Granma.
Under the Maritime Transportation Security Act and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as the provisions of Title 46 of the U.S. Code, Section 70108, as amended, and the inclusion of the Island on the infamous list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security, under which the Coast Guard operates, must assume that the ports of countries like Cuba do not comply with effective anti-terrorism measures.
But the real objective of the new maneuver is to damage official cooperation between Cuba and the U.S. in matters of national security of both countries, and it expands the extraterritorial character of the blockade by attempting to dissuade U.S. and foreign maritime vessel operators from engaging with the Island, he added.
It makes the already complex interaction more difficult, because although States have the sovereign right to regulate access to their territorial waters, intensifying these restrictions reveals the insistence on promoting the false idea that Cuba is a threat to U.S. security.
Bilateral cooperation in maritime security was formalized between 2015 and 2016, with the Department of Homeland Security as the fundamental implementing agency of the link. Since then, the Coast Guard has maintained fluid and effective ties with Cuba's Border Guard Troops, especially in confronting illicit trafficking of migrants and drugs.
Cuba has also been a partner in U.S. national security, said González Maestrey, who exemplified areas of joint work such as combating terrorism, human trafficking, port and airport security, and the flow of people and goods between the two nations. (Source: Granma)
