Statement from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs on February 1, 2025
photo: Bill Hackwell
On January 31, 2025, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he had informed the U.S. Congress of the revocation of the suspension of the possibility of filing lawsuits in U.S. courts, pursuant to Title III of the Helms-Burton Act.
He also approved the reinstatement of the List of Restricted Cuban Entities, with which entities or persons in the United States are prohibited from carrying out transactions, under penalty of being fined and their assets frozen. He reported the decision to add the Cuban remittance processing company, Orbit S.A., to that list.
These are not unexpected actions. They are steps that were needed to undo the late, albeit positive, decisions announced by President Joe Biden on January 14th.
This announcement may also be the prelude to other measures that the team in charge of the Cuba issue in this government has designed since 2017 to be able to further tighten, gratuitously and irresponsibly, the siege against Cuba in search of new and avoidable scenarios of deterioration and bilateral confrontation.
The objective of the measures is to intimidate foreign investors and prevent them from contributing to the economic development of Cuba and the well-being of Cubans, through the express threat of being sued in US courts. It is also to close all sources of external income to the Cuban economy as a whole; to criminally sabotage the capacity of all economic actors, public and private, to provide goods and services; and to further deteriorate the living standards of the population affected by the blockade and the additional measures imposed during Trump’s first term, to create social irritation and destabilization, and to try to achieve the often dreamed of and never achieved goal of overthrowing the Revolution for the purposes of domination and punishment.
These actions are accompanied by communication operations of disinformation and discredit and a powerful machinery of manipulation on digital platforms, with the purpose of holding Cuba responsible for the impact of the criminal measures of the United States government, so that the world and the people of Cuba do not recognize their executioners.
These are the same people who are motivated by the commitment made to reactionary families and special interest groups in the United States and Florida, who benefit from the blockade of Cuba, sacrificing the well-being and threatening even the livelihood of the Cuban people. These politicians today are the same architects of the dozens of additional measures to the blockade that were put into effect between 2017 and 2021.
Since the approval of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996 and until 2019, all American presidents, including Trump in the first two years of his previous term, consecutively made use of the executive power to suspend the application of Title III every six months, recognizing that it contravenes International Law and the sovereignty of other States. Also because they understood that its application would generate insurmountable obstacles to any prospect of solving the claims and compensation to Americans whose properties were legitimately nationalized upon the triumph of the Revolution.
As a result, since 2019, around 45 lawsuits have been filed in the courts, mainly against American companies. These have had to spend money, time and energy to defend themselves against what experts consider a legal aberration, with aspects that would qualify it as unconstitutional. Among the most significant aberrations, this title extends its scope to owners who were not citizens of the United States at the time of the nationalizations and whose alleged properties have not been certified by anyone.
These are measures that have nothing to do with the national interest of the United States, or the desires of a large part of the business community in that country that wants to participate in the Cuban economy. On the contrary, it is linked to the outdated desires of the political heirs of the dictator Fulgencio Batista for reconquest.
It is a demonstration of the corrupt nature with which this government operates in general and, specifically, of its objective of economically suffocating Cuba, causing harm to our people, and pretending that we renounce the sovereign prerogatives whose conquest has cost so many years, efforts and lives.
With the reactivation of Title III, the full application of the Helms-Burton Act is complete again. It is distinguished by its extreme extraterritorial scope, because it violates the norms and principles of International Law, contravenes the rules of trade and international economic relations, and is harmful to the sovereignty of other States, mainly because its provisions affect companies and persons established in their territory. It has been widely, consistently, and almost unanimously rejected by the international community in the United Nations, specialized international organizations, and regional organizations. Several countries have national laws to address the extraterritorial effects of this law.
The Government of Cuba reiterates the principles of the Law for the Reaffirmation of Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty (Law No. 80) and recalls the decision of the Provincial People’s Court of Havana, on November 2, 1999, to declare the Claim against the Government of the United States for Human Damages admissible, sanctioning it to repair and indemnify the Cuban people in the amount of 181.1 billion dollars. Subsequently, on May 5, 2000, the Court determined the Economic Damages caused to Cuba and sentenced Cuba to compensate for the amount of 121 billion dollars.
Cuba has reiterated its willingness to find a solution to the claims and mutual compensations. The Cuban nationalizations were carried out under the protection of laws, in strict adherence to the Constitution of our country and in accordance with International Law. All the nationalizations contemplated fair and adequate compensation processes, which the government of the United States refused to consider. Cuba reached and honored global compensation agreements with other nations that today invest in our country, such as Spain, Switzerland, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.
Likewise, the Cuban government denounces and holds the United States government responsible for the immediate consequences that the new measure against the right of Cuban emigrants to send remittances and help their families will have throughout the country, who are already suffering too much from the tightened siege due to the unjust and fraudulent inclusion of Cuba on the list of States that supposedly sponsor terrorism.
Cuba rejects these decisions, in an energetic, firm and categorical manner. It assumes them as a new hostile and arrogant act, and repudiates the disrespectful and slanderous language of the State Department’s statement, riddled with lies to try to justify the unjustifiable.
They will not be able to fool anyone with their false pretexts to try to justify these and future abuses. They will only succeed in reinforcing the isolation and universal rejection that the shameful abuse of the United States governments against Cuba and its population arouses.
We call on the international community to stop, denounce and accompany our people in the face of the new and dangerous onslaught of aggression that has only just begun.
They will do much harm with their murderous and cowardly plans and measures, but they will never achieve their main objective of bringing Cuba to its knees in order to subdue it.
Cuba will win!
Translation by Ed Newman
Source: Radio Havana Cuba (RHC)