[:es]Canada Demands End of U.S. Blockade on Cuba (+Photos)[:]

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Havana, Jul 24 .-Friends of Cuba in Canada gathered in front of the U.S. consulate in Vancouver to demand the end of the economic and financial blockade, which has caused countless damages to the people of the Caribbean country.

 

Activist Tamara Hansen told Prensa Latina via Facebook that the mobilization took place as it has every month since the initiative was launched on September 17, 2015.

Under the slogan ‘Lifting the US blockade Against Cuba Now’ and organized by the Friends of Cuba against the U.S. Blockade-Vancouver (FCAB-Van) group, the peaceful demonstration called on the White House to listen to the international outcry.

On November 1, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution against the blockade for the twenty-sixth consecutive time, supported by an overwhelming majority (191 votes in favor and only two against, the United States and Israel).

During the solidarity demonstration, participants carried banners reading: ‘Cuba Yes, Blockade No!’ and ‘Return Guantanamo to Cuba Now!’, referring to the territory illegally occupied by a US naval base in that eastern province of the Caribbean island.

The blockade, imposed in 1962 and maintained by both Democratic and Republican governments, is the longest economic siege in human history, experts say.

A statement by the group almost three years ago, when the monthly sit-ins in Vancouver began, stressed that ‘despite the normalization of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States (…), many of the criminal policies (…) have been in place for more than 50 years’.

FCAB-Van is the successor to the Free the Cuban 5 Committee-Vancouver. It was founded shortly after the celebration of the victory over the return of the island’s anti-terrorists unjustly imprisoned in the United States on September 12, 1998.

FCAB-Van publicly warned that’as long as the cruel blockade exists, the group will return each month in front of the U.S. consulate in Vancouver’, as they did for the return of the Five to their homeland (Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez).

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(Prensa Latina)

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