Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

A group of civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, trade unions and po­lit­i­cal move­ments gath­ered out­side the Unit­ed States Em­bassy at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day to protest the US eco­nom­ic block­ade of Cu­ba, de­scrib­ing it as il­le­gal and harm­ful to the Cuban peo­ple.

Speak­ing at the demon­stra­tion, David Ab­du­lah, an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the As­sem­bly of Caribbean Peo­ple (ACP), read a joint state­ment on be­half of Trinidad and To­ba­go–based or­gan­i­sa­tions ex­press­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with Cu­ba and con­demn­ing “uni­lat­er­al co­er­cive mea­sures” im­posed by the US.

Ab­du­lah said the decades-long block­ade amounts to col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment and vi­o­lates in­ter­na­tion­al law and the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter.

“There is ab­solute­ly no ev­i­dence to sup­port the des­ig­na­tion of Cu­ba as a state spon­sor of ter­ror­ism,” Ab­du­lah said, adding that Cu­ba’s en­gage­ment with Colom­bian armed groups was lim­it­ed to fa­cil­i­tat­ing peace ne­go­ti­a­tions.

He said all Cari­com gov­ern­ments have adopt­ed a sim­i­lar po­si­tion and re­called that T&T was among the first Caribbean na­tions to es­tab­lish diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Cu­ba in 1972 de­spite US op­po­si­tion.

Ab­du­lah al­so cit­ed re­peat­ed votes at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly call­ing for an end to the block­ade, not­ing that the res­o­lu­tions have re­ceived over­whelm­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port for more than a decade.

Ref­er­enc­ing a No­vem­ber 2025 re­port by UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur Ali­na Duhan, Ab­du­lah said US sanc­tions have re­strict­ed Cu­ba’s abil­i­ty to main­tain es­sen­tial in­fra­struc­ture and pro­vide health­care, food and so­cial ser­vices. The re­port urged the US to lift all uni­lat­er­al co­er­cive mea­sures against Cu­ba.

Ab­du­lah fur­ther ac­cused the US of es­ca­lat­ing pres­sure by re­strict­ing oil ship­ments to Cu­ba and threat­en­ing puni­tive tar­iffs against coun­tries sup­ply­ing en­er­gy to the is­land, warn­ing that such ac­tions could deep­en an al­ready se­vere hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion.

“This will im­pact most se­vere­ly women, chil­dren, the el­der­ly and those in ur­gent need of health­care,” Ab­du­lah said.

The coali­tion al­so high­light­ed Cu­ba’s con­tri­bu­tions to T&T and the wider glob­al south, in­clud­ing schol­ar­ships for Caribbean stu­dents, the de­ploy­ment of med­ical brigades dur­ing health emer­gen­cies, free eye surg­eries un­der Op­er­a­tion Mi­la­gro and as­sis­tance in sports de­vel­op­ment and dis­as­ter re­sponse.

Among the or­gan­i­sa­tions en­dors­ing the state­ment were the As­sem­bly of Caribbean Peo­ple (T&T Chap­ter), Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), Joint Trade Union Move­ment, Trinidad and To­ba­go Friends of Cu­ba, Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Net­work of NGOs for the Ad­vance­ment of Women and Trin­ba­go for Pales­tine.

Al­so present at the protest was Clyde Cal­len­der, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Friends of Cu­ba.