With a Quarter of the World’s Population Under US
Sanctions, Countries Appeal to UN to Intervene
Eight countries, representing around one-quarter of
all humanity, say that Washington’s actions are
undermining their response to the COVID–19 pandemic
sweeping the planet.
By Alan Macleod
March 28,
2020 "Information
Clearing House"
-
The governments of
China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia,
Syria, and Venezuela – all under sanctions from the
United States – sent a joint statement to the United
Nations Secretary-General, the UN’s High
Commissioner on Human Rights and the
Director-General of the World Health Organization
calling for an end to the unilateral American
economic blockade, as they are, “illegal and
blatantly violate international law and the charter
of the United Nations.”
The eight countries,
representing around one-quarter of humanity, say
that Washington’s actions are undermining their
response to the COVID–19 pandemic sweeping the
planet. “The destructive impact of said measures at
the national level, plus their extraterritorial
implication, together with the phenomenon of
over-compliance and the fear for ‘secondary
sanctions,’ hinder the ability of national
governments” in procuring even basic medical
equipment and supplies, including coronavirus test
kits and medicine. It is a “hard if not impossible
deed for those countries who are currently facing
the application of unilateral coercive measures,” to
cope, they conclude.
The letter was
shared on Twitter by Joaquin Perez, Venezuela’s
Permanent Ambassador to the UN.
That U.S.
sanctions are “blatant violations of international
law,” the letter states, is not in doubt. As the
American Special Rapporteur to the UN, Alfred de
Zayas,
notes,
only sanctions expressly verified and imposed
collectively by the UN Security Council can be
considered legal; any unilateral punishment is, by
definition, illegal.
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De Zayas,
a legal scholar, notes that sanctions are
tantamount to a “collective punishment” against
a population, an explicit violation of multiple
articles of the UN Charter, the foundation of
international law.
De Zayas
traveled to Venezuela last year, describing the U.S.
sanctions as akin to a medieval siege and accusing
the Trump administration of “crimes against
humanity.” The United Nations Human Rights Council
formally condemned
the U.S., called on all member states to break the
sanctions, and even began discussing the reparations
Washington should pay to Venezuela, noting that
Trump’s sanctions were designed to
“disproportionately affect the poor and most
vulnerable.”
None
of this was reported in any major American media
outlet at the time.
The sanctions
meant that Venezuela was unable to import key
medicines for conditions like cancer and diabetes,
leading to scores of deaths. A 2019
report
from the Washington-based Center for Economic Policy
Research conservatively estimated the sanctions
killed 40,000 Venezuelans between mid-2017 and 2018.
Yesterday, the
Trump administration turned the screw tighter,
putting out a bizarre hit on President Nicolas
Maduro, offering $15 million to anybody who could
bring him to them in chains. Other key figures like
Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino and Head of the
Constituent Assembly Diosdado Cabello also had
bounties placed on their heads, supposedly because
they were part of a drug trafficking ring.
The U.S. is
also turning up the heat on COVID-19 plagued Iran.
Senior Washington insiders like Newt Gingrich are
dreaming
that their sanctions will finally bring about regime
change in the Islamic Republic. Sanctions
led
to the Iranian rial losing 80 percent of its value,
with both food prices and unemployment doubling.
While medicine is technically exempt from sanctions,
in reality, Washington has frightened away any
nation or corporation from doing business with
Tehran. Even as coronavirus was raging through the
country, no nation was willing to donate even basic
supplies to Iran. Eventually, the World Health
Organization stepped in and directly supplied it
with provisions. An October report from Human Rights
Watch
noted
that “the overbroad and burdensome nature of the US
sanctions has led banks and companies around the
world to pull back from humanitarian trade with
Iran, leaving Iranians who have rare or complicated
diseases unable to get the medicine and treatment
they require.” At least 2,378 Iranians have died of
COVID-19, many of them needlessly.
Despite the
embargoes they are under, many countries on the
sanctioned list have contributed greatly to the
world’s fight against COVID-19. Despite facing a
shortage
of basic supplies like soap, Cuba continues to
export doctors and other medical staff around the
world, often to the worst affected areas. Meanwhile,
China, the original epicenter of the outbreak,
appears to have come to grips with the pandemic and
is now exporting its battle-hardened medical staff
as well as huge quantities of crucial supplies. This
has been
presented
in the U.S. as a dastardly plot to “curry favor” and
shift blame away from their supposed mishandling of
the virus in the first place.
The United
States has long had a fractious relationship with
the UN, constantly using its veto power to sink
progressive legislation that would weaken its
military, cultural or economic hegemony. In 2017,
the U.S. formally
pulled out
of the UN’s scientific and cultural organization,
UNESCO, in response to the group admitting
Palestine. American sanctions are not popular at all
in the world; in November, for instance, the UN
voted 187-3 (U.S., Israel, Brazil) to condemn
Washington’s embargo on Cuba. It was the
twenty-eighth consecutive year with vote totals
varying little from year to year.
The sanctioned
countries warn that Trump’s actions are killing not
only Americans at home but people all over the
world. “We cannot allow for political calculations
to get in the way of saving human lives,” they
conclude. However, precisely because the U.S. has so
much power on the world stage, it is unlikely their
protestations will get them very far.
Feature photo
| A person in protective clothing walks through a
temporary 2,000-bed field hospital for COVID-19
coronavirus patients set up by the Iranian army at
the international exhibition center in northern
Tehran, Iran, March 26, 2020. Ebrahim Noroozi | AP
Alan MacLeod is
a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing
his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad
News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and
Misreporting and Propaganda
in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent.
He has also contributed to Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting, The
Guardian, Salon, The
Grayzone, Jacobin
Magazine, Common
Dreams the American
Herald Tribune and The
Canary. -
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