Yankee blockade hinders donation delivery from Alibaba Company.
BEIJING, China. – Cuba’s Ambassador to China, Carlos Miguel Pereira, reported this Wednesday that the U.S. economic, financial and commercial blockade prevents Alibaba Company from sending a donation to the island to combat Covid-19.
According to the diplomat, the American firm hired to transport a batch of face masks and diagnostic kits for the deadly disease to the Caribbean nation, declined at the last minute its entrustment under the argument of the regulations of the hostile siege.
The noble, massive and commendable effort of the founder of Alibaba and Jack Ma Foundation, who had managed to reach more than half a hundred countries around the world, was unable to touch Cuban soil, no matter how necessary those resources could be in support of the battle the small island besieged and blocked maintains, Pereira added.
The Cuban diplomat expressed in his Government’s name a deep appreciation to the Chinese entrepreneur for the donation and ongoing efforts to reach his final destination, Prensa Latina news agency says
Again, the unfair, arbitrary and illegal blockade that disrupts everything. Things for Cuba will always be more difficult, so every achievement, every small step of progress, becomes a colossal triumph against demons, the Cuban Ambassador to China said in an opinion piece.
Last March 22nd Jack Ma announced on Twitter the sending of two million masks, 400 thousand diagnostic reagents and 104 fans for 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Cuba, to support the facing of the Covid-19 pandemic.
One world, a single struggle, Pereira wrote adding that they would promptly transport the cargo to Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Peru, among other states of that region.
Apart from Latin America and the Caribbean, Jack Ma and the Alibaba Foundation prepared similar donations for nations in Asia, Africa Europe and the United States.
In the face of the international spread of Covid-19, many voices urge Washington to lift its unilateral measures imposed on Cuba, Venezuela and Iran to ensure access to humanitarian aid and the products needed by their respective peoples.
However, the White House ignores the calls and even threatens to harden its coercive policy against those nations.
In the case of Cuba, President Donald Trump’s Administration has recently increased the nearly 60-year siege with limitations of family remittances, restrictions on people-to-people contact, and increasing harassment of foreign companies with business on the island.