EFE (via 14ymedio), Moscow, 2 October 2023 — Russian and Latin American parliamentarians condemned, on Monday, the unilateral sanctions imposed by the West against 30 countries within the framework of the First Russia-Latin America international parliamentary conference.
“We categorically oppose sanctions, any unilateral restriction of an illegitimate nature that violates international law and the rules of international trade,” said the president of the Russian Senate, Valentina Matviyenko, during her speech at the plenary of the conference at the House of Trade Unions in Moscow.
The Russian parliamentarian called for “uniting our efforts in international parliamentary spaces to fight against this illegal practice.” The senator said that Cuba has been “blockaded for more than 60 years” and described it as “unacceptable that in the 21st century a country extrapolates its jurisdiction to other sovereign states and forces them to support certain sanctions.”
“I believe that the time has come for the international community to firmly raise with the UN and other international organizations the inadmissibility of any unilateral sanctions, so that they are condemned and prohibited, since they are sanctions against the peoples,” she said.
For his part, the president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Jorge Rodríguez, recalled that “to date, 30 countries suffer 26,162 sanctions imposed by a single country and its satellites,” which represent 28% of the world’s population.
He described unilateral sanctions as a new “plague” for humanity that affects the well-being of peoples and the right to public health, as well as access to technologies and development.
The president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Jorge Rodríguez, recalled that “to date, 30 countries suffer 26,162 sanctions imposed by a single country and its satellites
Meanwhile, the president of the People’s Assembly of Cuba, Esteban Lazo, highlighted “the unprecedented resurgence” of the US economic and financial blockade against his country, with the application of 243 new measures imposed by US President Donald Trump and maintained by the Joe Biden Administration.
He described the inclusion of Cuba on the “illegal” list of countries sponsoring terrorism as “especially cruel and politically motivated,” which seriously hinders the country’s financial transactions.
Lazo pointed out that Cuba not only does not sponsor terrorism, but, in fact, has been the victim of attacks of this type on repeated occasions, many of which were organized on US territory.
Meanwhile, the presidential adviser for the International Cooperation of Nicaragua, Laureano Ortega Murillo, took the opportunity to point out that the cooperation between Moscow and Managua is totally different from the “model of cooperation imposed by the United States, Canada and their European allies.”
According to Ortega, these countries condition cooperation on the imposition of their ideology, their conditions and their “selfish interests.”
He accused the United States, Canada and Europe of using “illegal sanctions” that are an aggression against the sovereignty of countries that do not submit to their mandates.
He pointed out that, despite pressures from the West, Nicaragua continues to deepen its relations with Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and Bolivia, “so as not to depend” on the United States or Europe” and have its own financial mechanisms immune to Western “blackmail and economic terrorism.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated this conference last Friday, in which he welcomed Latin American countries to join the BRICS group, which includes Brazil and which will be joined by Argentina in 2024.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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