A high-level forum put on by The University of the West Indies (The UWI) on Thursday birthed calls for international solidarity and cooperation to support Cuba’s sovereignty and independence with Dr Miriam Nicado, rector of the University of Havana, declaring that the United States’ imposition of even harsher sanctions on the country in recent months has spawned a humanitarian crisis amounting to “genocide”.

Nicado, a doctor of mathematical sciences and full professor, was one of several panellists during the university’s Vice-Chancellor’s Forum, titled “Perspectives on the Current Cuban Crisis: Issues, Impact, and Imperatives”. She described as “unprecedented” the situation which she says “is painful to experience on a daily basis”.

“Every Cuban has to think about how they’re going to eat, how they’re going to move around, how are they going to access medicines, and how they’re going to feed their children. This is something that we have never experienced at this level of severity, which we are experiencing at the moment. For us, it is important that the international community understands that what is happening is a strangling policy, it’s an obsessive policy that has been in place for many years,” Nicado stated.

She said the ongoing blockade has ravaged Cuba’s vibrant education sector with the majority of its universities now shuttered.

“Most of our universities have closed their doors with students receiving instruction from home or online, but since we are not guaranteed electricity, this has an impact on this format, and this will affect the quality of training that we give,” she pointed out.

According to Nicado, Cuba has suffered the punishing effects of economic sanctions for nearly 70 years simply because of its insistence in “demonstrating how to communicate values”.

“Cuba was able, with our scientists, to provide — even when our children were being denied pencils, materials. We have shown the world that a socialist system can ensure that all services reach all citizens and among the universities and the scientists we have ensured that each citizen, regardless of [his] class or origin, regardless of [his] social class would have access. So why now would we have to change in the way they want us to change. Why do we have to do that? Why do we have to go back to being a colony when, for over 100 years, Cuba has been characterised by a spirit of independence, anti-colonialism, a spirit of sovereignty, and one of our vaccines is called sovereign, because we are independent,” she contended.

“What we are defending today is our independence, a line of action that is purely Cuban. What we want to transform from an economic point of view is to achieve even more independence and sovereignty. Now we can’t have full independence or sovereignty if we do not have a logical, beautiful interaction with the entire Caribbean and with the rest of the world. We cannot think about the fact that mothers cannot have medical attention. How can a country impose this on a small country? So I want us to think about the fact that imposition is not the way. When our people cannot eat, this is genocide, and we can’t achieve peace. And so this is the brief intervention that I wanted to make for the future of our peoples,” Nicado declared.

Special guest speaker Ambassador of Cuba to Jamaica Tanya Lopez La Roque described the crisis as unnatural.

“As the saying goes, it is easy to squeeze someone’s throat and then blame them for being unable to breathe. Similarly, it is dishonest to present sanctions as an act of support for the people, while these measures block the arrival of fuel, food, and medicines, and seek to punish anyone wishing to invest in or trade with the country,” the diplomat argued.

She pointed out that, in the face of the current situation, Cuba has adopted a series of measures to mitigate the effects of the energy and economic crisis. Among them, the ambassador said, is the acceleration of renewable energy programmes, particularly photovoltaic solar parks, the gradual restoration of modernisation of electricity generation capacities and the diversification of economic and energy partners.

In pointing out that “the Cuban experience offers important lessons for Latin America and the Caribbean” and “demonstrates the need to strengthen multilateral mechanism and regional cooperation” she said it also “highlights the importance of upholding the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and the peaceful settlement of disputes”.

“From our perspective, the defence of sovereignty is not synonymous with isolation, but rather the ability to freely determine one’s own national destiny without external pressure. We will continue to defend our independence, dignity and right to develop our national project, convinced that cooperation and solidarity are more powerful tools than any mechanism of pressure or isolation. We will not ask for permission to exist, nor will we surrender our sovereignty,” La Roque stated. On the contrary, she said, “Cuba will continue to seek solutions through hard work, popular participation, and international relations”.

“The response to the blockade is a combination of resistance, creativity, and economic transformations while preserving the principles of social justice that have characterized our nation… Let Cuba live, let Cuba show the world what our people is capable of when there are no obstacles to their efforts to rise up,” La Roque ended.

In the meantime Professor Emerita Jessica Byron-Reid, former Head of the Institute of International Relations (IIR) at The UWI said the question now remains how to organise the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Caribbean neighbour and how to continue to deliver this humanitarian assistance under the present prohibitive circumstances.

She said it was ultimately a question of deciding “how to facilitate Cuba’s economic recovery after this storm and collaborate with allies and the use of our diplomacy to calm the atmosphere, calm the regional atmosphere, and to shift the direction of policy and actions to greater mobilisation of support for Cuba”.

“This is our opportunity to give back a fraction of the goodwill we have received from Cuba over more than half a century. In every disaster there is always opportunity,” Byron-Reid told the forum.

Meanwhile Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Canute Thompson, in delivering remarks on behalf of Vice Chancellor, Professor Hilary Beckles, said while Cuba has largely withstood the punishing effects of debilitating economic sanctions for nearly 70 years the last seven months have been arguably the most severe.

“We see a frightening litany of issues, children dying because doctors cannot access essential medicines in a country which had one of the lowest mortality rates… It’s against the backdrop of this dire reality, sounding like something we haven’t seen or heard in our lifetime, that we are met today as a community of concerned citizens and scholars to share perspectives, to examine the issues, to assess the impacts, and if we are able to offer and articulate solutions and imperatives,” Thompson said.

In noting that the forum was “more than just a conversation” he said the University would be undertaking a humanitarian relief effort led by the School of Graduate Studies and Research to help alleviate the crisis facing the neighbouring country.

According to reports, with fuel shipments disrupted, Cuba’s oil reserves have fallen to life-threateningly low levels with daily blackouts since May exceeding 20 hours. Shipments of humanitarian food have also been affected with some 3,000 metric tons sitting outside Cuba.