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The Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel celebrated on Tuesday the intervention of his chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla before the UN Security Council, where the head of Cuban diplomacy accused the U.S. government of violating international law and warned of a potential humanitarian catastrophe in Cuba.
In a message posted on his X account, Díaz-Canel stated that Rodríguez "has carried the dignified and sovereign voice of Cuba to the Security Council," and emphasized that the Foreign Minister urged the international community to mobilize to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe "either through weapons or by means of an energy blockade and the extreme tightening of the blockade that also kill and cause suffering."
Rodríguez participated on Tuesday in an open debate of the Security Council titled "Defending the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations Charter and Strengthening the International System Centered on the UN."
In his speech, the Cuban Foreign Minister denounced that the U.S. is in a position of "breaking International Peace and Security" and violating International Humanitarian Law concerning Cuba.
Rodríguez described the U.S. oil embargo as equivalent to a "naval blockade," which he characterized as "an act of war and genocide" that subjects the Cuban population to "collective punishment."
As evidence of the humanitarian impact, he cited the doubling of Cuba's infant mortality rate, from 4.0 to 9.9 per thousand live births, and the reduction in life expectancy for children suffering from cancer from 85% to 65%.
The regime attributes this decline to the U.S. energy embargo, although independent analysts also point to the collapse of the internal healthcare system, a result of decades of mismanagement by the dictatorship.
Rodríguez also warned that a military aggression "would provoke a bloodbath," resulting in the deaths of Cubans and American youths "without a cause or ideal to defend, dragged into violence by an imperialist, neofascist policy."
The Cuban Foreign Ministry shared a video clip featuring the final statement of the Foreign Minister at the Security Council: “Let no one doubt that if a moment comes that we hope will never occur, the people of Cuba will fight to the last consequence. Homeland or death, we will overcome.”
Díaz-Canel also highlighted that Rodríguez called on Latin America and the Caribbean to "preserve their status as a Zone of Peace and avoid adverse consequences that could destabilize the region."
The intervention at the UN took place on the same day that an interview was released in which Rodríguez granted to Fox News accusing the Trump administration of using the criminal charge against Raúl Castro as a "political narrative to justify a military aggression against Cuba," and where he directly attacked Secretary of State Marco Rubio: "I've heard him lie time and time again about this issue."
The speech of the Cuban chancellor occurs within the context of the greatest escalation of tension between Washington and Havana in decades, following Trump's executive orders that imposed secondary sanctions on countries supplying oil to Cuba, which would have reduced the island's energy imports by 80% to 90%, exacerbating blackouts of up to 25 hours daily in much of the national territory.
On May 20, the U.S. Department of Justice declassified a federal indictment against Raúl Castro and five Cuban military officials for the downing of two aircraft from Brothers to the Rescue on February 24, 1996, which resulted in the deaths of four individuals.
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