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INTRODUCTION

For more than 40 years, the Cuban people have confronted the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the government of the United States of America, one of the most cruel, inhuman and prolonged policies of hostility endured by any people in the history of human civilization.

From the very moment of the triumph of the Revolution, when the people of Cuba made a reality of the enjoyment of their right to self-determination by destroying the foundations of the neocolonial regime maintained on the island by the United States, the U.S. authorities imposed various economic sanctions against Cuba with the express goal of causing "hunger, despair and the overthrow of government," as stated in an official U.S. State Department document dated April 6, 1960.

Throughout these last 44 years, a total of 10 different U.S. administrations have merely reinforced and expanded the complex system of laws and measures that make up the blockade established by the U.S. government against the people of Cuba.

This policy has inflicted and continues to inflict serious and onerous damages on the Cuban people's material, psychological and spiritual welfare, while seriously hindering its economic, cultural and social development.

It is enough to remember that six in every ten Cubans have been born and have lived their whole lives under the system of sanctions described, which has been further accompanied by military aggression, biological warfare, illegal radio and television broadcasting, terrorist activities, attempts on the lives of the country's leaders, the encouragement of illegal emigration, and other hostile acts promoted, financed, supported or permitted by successive U.S. administrations.

The primary goal of the blockade is quite simply that of effecting the economic and social asphyxiation of the Cuban nation, by depriving it of the basic means of survival. The prohibitions and restrictions imposed on the Cuban people by the blockade are totally lacking in any legal, moral or ethical basis. In accordance with Item C of Article II of the Geneva Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, of 9 December 1948, the blockade imposed by the U.S. government against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide and therefore a crime under international law.

The current Republican administration of President George W. Bush has stepped up the measures and prohibitions of the blockade against Cuba to unprecedented levels. His actions are fully consistent with the traditional policy of the extreme right in the United States and the most extremist and violent sectors of the Cuban-American émigré community there, intent on undermining the very existence of the Cuban nation. It is worth remembering, in this regard, that the United States' designs on Cuba are nothing new. From the very dawn of the emergence of the American Union, efforts were aimed at the annexation of Cuba, whether through purchase, cession or even armed force. These efforts were grounded in such policies as the Monroe Doctrine or the "ripe apple" theory, and served as a prelude, at that early date, to the interventionism and unilateralism that characterize the United States today. As such, following the U.S. intervention in 1898, the Republic of Cuba that emerged four years later was weighed down by a constitutional amendment which, for all practical purposes, converted Cuba into a colony of its northern neighbor, a situation which persisted until 1959 and the triumph of the Revolution.

By intensifying the blockade, the current U.S. president is in fact returning the decisive "favor" he received from the Cuban-American terrorist mob in Miami, which played a leading role in the fraud that allowed George W. Bush to usurp the presidency in the 2000 elections, as will be recalled. This mob is made up by corrupt politicians who profited from the hunger and blood of the Cuban people up until 1959, notorious torturers and murderers who took the lives of more than 20,000 Cubans, the thieves who depleted the public treasury, and all of the human scum who sustained the Batista dictatorship and the United States' neocolonial power over Cuba, along with their followers and heirs, as well as all those who have promoted, financed and continued to perpetrate the most criminal acts of terrorism against the Cuban people in these last 44 years.

The current U.S. government's attempt to impose its own will upon the world as the only applicable standard, trampling international law and resorting to the indiscriminate and illegal threat and use of force for this purpose, has served to seriously encourage plans for aggression against Cuba, including military aggression.

Knowing perfectly well that they will never succeed in undermining the Cuban people's unshakable support of the Revolution, the Cuban-American terrorist mob in Miami, important figures and militaristic hawks within the reactionary Republican administration governing the United States, and of course the mercenaries paid by both to operate within Cuba, have staked their hopes on the sinister idea of provoking an armed attack on Cuba by the United States.

Those who promote such aggression as a means of bringing an end to the process of revolutionary transformations sovereignly undertaken by the Cuban people have continued to fabricate, one after another, successive and false pretexts to promote their plans.

Consequently, Cuba is maintained, with no justification whatsoever, on the list illegitimately drawn up by the U.S. State Department of countries that allegedly promote or protect terrorism in the world. In addition, officials from the Bush administration have repeated false accusations regarding Cuba's alleged capacity for the production of biological weapons.

At the same time, the U.S. government -- the same one that has assumed the right to limit the self-determination of any people in the world through its so-called "preemptive strikes", and is holding thousands of individuals in legal limbo and subhuman conditions at the Guantánamo Naval Base and on its own continental territory -- uses blackmail and coercion year after year to impose a resolution that manipulates the issue of human rights, so as to fabricate an illegitimate pretext for its policy of hostility towards Cuba.

In the meantime, the Migration Accords signed between the two countries in 1994 and 1995 have been a particular target for attack by the enemies of the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba. The basic goal is to put an end to the orderly migratory flow established in these agreements and thereby incite massive illegal emigration from the island, as a result of the difficult conditions imposed on the Cuban people by the blockade and the encouragement of illegal emigration entailed by the absurd and murderous "Cuban Adjustment Act". Unprecedented in history, this legislation stipulates special guarantees and rights, including residence in the United States, exclusively for Cubans who arrive on U.S. soil illegally. This treatment contrasts sharply with the way in which millions of citizens of other countries who reach the territory of the superpower in the same way are hunted down, physically and psychologically abused, incarcerated and deported.

The response of the U.S. government to the adoption of General Assembly resolution 57/11, which received the votes of 173 states in favor of demanding that the U.S. government put an end to its policy of blockade against Cuba, has simply been an intensification of its illegal sanctions against the island.

Could the international community possibly allow such a grave affront to multilateralism, international law and the ethical and moral principles that guide international relations to go unanswered?

Cuba calls for an international order in which respect for international law prevails for everyone equally, as an unrenounceable paradigm of peaceful coexistence and justice on the planet. With the rightness of its cause and the solid unity forged in its historic battle for the full exercise of its sovereignty, Cuba will endure and triumph over the United States' attempts to wear down its commitment to independence through hunger, disease, and the wide array of obstacles to its economic and social wellbeing and progress.

The information compiled in this report, which is only a part of what can be said publicly, includes overwhelming evidence and detailed examples of the damages caused by the blockade to the Cuban people, with emphasis on the most recent incidents.

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