800,000 Cubans Protest against US Embargo MoveLed by President Fidel Castro, more than 800,000 Cuban people marched in the capital on Wednesday morning to protest the US newly-written-into-law restrictions and demand an immediate end to the four-decade-old trade embargo."End the embargo! Long live the motherland! Long live the revolution!" chanted the demonstrators as they marched along Havana's seafront boulevard towards the building of the US Interests' Section. Among the demonstrators were First vice-President of the State Council and chief of the Armed Forces Raul Castro, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and President of Cuba's National Assembly Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada. The demonstration, "the first action of strike back to political maneuvering by US extreme right-wing politicians and anti-Castro Cuban-American groups," will tell the world that the so-called easing of sanctions does not exist at all, said the Cuban government. Last week, the US Congress approved a proposal to allow US food and medicine sales to Cuba, which would be a significant easing of sanctions if the same piece of legislation did not prohibit the US federal government and banks from supporting these sales and ban American tourism to Cuba. "The embargo is in fact strengthened," said the ruling Cuban Communist Party in a statement on Monday. "We can not accept humiliating and unjust conditions. Our country will not buy one cent of foods or medicines in the United States," it added. The US Senate will debate on the proposal on Thursday. Another new law would allow the use of frozen Cuban funds in the US to compensate the victims of pilots killed by Cuba's airforce. Cuba has condemned the measure as "robbery" and "support for terrorist groups." In 1996, two planes owned by some Cuban-Americans were shot down as they intruded into Cuban airspace. |
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