Cuba Rejects New US Announcement on the Helms-Burton Act

Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, rejected the announcement of Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State, on the two-week postponement of the application of the Title III of the Helms-Burton Act.

In Twitter the Cuban FM pointed out that this law is an “aberration that should never have existed”, as a response to the communiqué sent by Pompeo this Wednesday to the U.S. Congress.

“Rejection of US State #announcement about HelmsBurton law, an aberration that should never have existed. It violates international law, it harms every #Cuban, every family. 191 countries demand that it be eliminated entirety. The U.S. aggression against #Venezuela must cease without further pretexts,” says the tweet, adding that the aggression against Venezuela must also cease without further pretexts.

Pompeo announced that the U.S. will postpone for two more weeks the decision of the complete application of the Helms-Burton Law, that is to say the suspension that expired on April 17, now takes the stage of the 18th of this month until May 1.

In his text he refers that the United States “continues to examine the situation of human rights in Cuba,” and adds that the State Department “is also monitoring the continuous military, security and intelligence support that Cuba” is offering Maduro, “who is responsible for the repression, violence and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.

With this, it reinforces its interfering policy, violating international law, with a violent rhetoric of threats and pressures on the Cuban people and government, and seeks to consolidate the policy of aggressions against Cuba and Venezuela.

“We encourage anyone doing business in Cuba to reconsider whether they are trafficking in confiscated goods,” Pompeo added, in open blackmail of companies around the world that do business with Cuba.

Helms-Burton was passed in 1996 as legislation that further tightens the economic blockade on Cuba, but Title III, which allows lawsuits to be filed in federal courts over properties nationalized by the revolutionary government, was suspended every six months by all the administrations of that country from then until recently, when President Donald Trump began to threaten and give deadlines for its application.

On January 16, he announced that he would only suspend it for 45 days, a position that the Cuban government called “a hostile act of extreme arrogance and irresponsibility,” and already in March the State Department cancelled for another 30 days the effective application of Title III, although it would allow, as of March 19, the filing of lawsuits against more than 200 Cuban companies included in a unilateral list of economic sanctions (referred to as the List of Restricted Cuban Entities).

Experts point out that the threat of fully applying the Helms-Burton Act
adds even more to the enormous damage caused by the blockade, since in addition to its extraterritorial character that seeks to intimidate those who currently trade or invest in Cuba, they seek to influence companies or people with an interest in investing.

They raise the level of confrontation with Cuba by accusing it of interference in Venezuela and considering it an obstacle in their plans to overthrow the legitimate government presided over by Nicolas Maduro.