First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez responded forcefully to recent statements of the US head of state Joe Biden who accused Cuba of being “a failed state”.

“A failed state is one that in order to please a reactionary and blackmailing minority, is capable of multiplying the damage to 11 million human beings, ignoring the will of the majority of Cubans, Americans and the international community,” the Cuban leader posted on Twitter.

“If President Biden had sincere humanitarian concern for the Cuban people, he could eliminate the 243 measures applied by President Donald Trump, including the more than 50 measures cruelly imposed during the pandemic, as a first step towards ending the blockade,” he added.

During a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel who was visiting Washington DC, Biden, in addition to alluding to the familiar US campaigns regarding internet access in Cuba, pointed out that he would not re-establish the sending of remittances to Cuba because “the Cuban government would take all, or a good chunk of them.”

In response to the flimsy pretexts of the US, Díaz-Canel said, “The US has failed in its efforts to destroy Cuba despite the fact that it has wasted billions of dollars to achieve it.”

On COVID-19, Biden said that he would be ready to donate significant quantities of vaccines if he were assured that an international organization would administer them, ignoring outright the fact that Cuba has produced five vaccine candidates, among them the first vaccine in emergency use in Latin America.

In this regard, the Cuban President wrote on Twitter: “In the US, due to the inefficiency of its government, many of the 600,000 lives lost to COVID-19 could not be saved. It has a shameful record of wars and violence; brutal repression and murders of citizens by the police; racism and human rights violations.”

“The absurd narrative they try to impose on Cuba is outrageous, offensive and damaging. No one is assassinated or disappeared here. The last Cuban dictatorship was overthrown in 1959. Hatred does not live here. We are a land of peace,” Díaz-Canel added.

On Sunday, July 11, acts of violence and public disorder took place in several parts of Cuba. The island’s political authorities have frequently exposed the participation of the United States in these actions that seek to generate chaos and instability in the country.

(Granma, July 16, 2021. Translated from original Spanish by TML)