Overwhelmingly the United Nations General Assembly voted to denounce the 58-year United States’ embargo against Cuba. Out of the 193-member body, 189 nations voted in favor of the “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” resolution.
The two nations to vote against it were the U.S. and its ally, Israel, while Ukraine and Moldova simply did not vote. There were no abstentions, Common Dreams reported.
Under the Obama administration, the United States improved relations with Cuba lifting the embargo, but abstained in the 2016 vote for a resolution by the UN.
Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Gholam-Ali Khoshroo, said that embargo the not only “violates the United Nations’ Charter as well as the international law” but “constitutes an obstacle for international cooperation.”
Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the UN called the resolution “a waste of everyone’s time.” And referred to the vote as “one more time that countries feel they can poke the United States in the eye.”
“But you’re not hurting the United States when you do this,” Haley said. “You are literally hurting the Cuban people by telling the regime that their treatment of their people is acceptable.”
But Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguez, said the U.S. has no room to talk accusing the government of committing “crimes against humanity.”
“The government of the United States doesn’t have the least moral authority to criticize Cuba or anyone when it comes to human rights,” Rodriguez said.
According to the Associated Press, he referred to the United States “dropping of the atom bomb in Japan in World War II, waging wars that ’caused the death of millions, many of them innocent,’ and carrying out what he claimed were ‘extrajudicial executions, kidnapping, and torture.'” Rodriguez went on to single out the violation of human rights of Americans including blacks, Hispanics, minorities, refugees, and migrants.
While the U.S. tried to offer 8 amendments to the resolution, they all failed.
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