UN Independent Experts Warn Cuba Risks Becoming a 'Silent Gaza'

Independent, Human Rights Council-appointed UN experts condemned the latest round of US sanctions on Cuba, calling them an attempt to "force change on a sovereign State through threats and coercion," and warned that without urgent international action Cuba risks becoming a "silent Gaza" — a comparison also drawn earlier by four visiting US Democratic members of Congress. The experts said energy, transport, irrigation, and basic services are breaking down simultaneously, with the humanitarian consequences "already unfolding into a full-blown crisis, threatening the rights to health, to life, to food and to development," hitting women, children, older people, and rural farmers hardest. They singled out the July 23 sanctions targeting energy companies for cutting off fuel imports even for humanitarian purposes, and cited growing food insecurity, medicine shortages, and uncollected waste in Havana raising disease risks. "Food must never be used as an instrument of political pressure," the experts said, calling on the US to revoke all measures inconsistent with international law and urging the UN Security Council and General Assembly to treat the situation as an urgent matter of international peace and security. The statement noted the State Department's own July 20 terrorism-designation report offered no concrete evidence to support its claims against Cuba.