The United States intensifies the extraterritoriallity of the blockage

By: Roberto Pérez Betancourt

 President George W. Bush's government intensifies blackmailing to entities at different countries in order them to obey extraterritorial arrangements and join the illegal blockade that United States has applied against Cuba for over 45 years. Some days before, a spokesperson from the Hilton hotel group in the United Kingdom, assured to the daily The Guardian that all subsidiaries of that North American chain received orders to forbid reservations to Cuban delegations, to continue extending the economic, commercial and financial aggressions against the island. 

The administration of W. Bush insists on the old pretension that other countries to cede their sovereignty and obey the  arbitrariness of  the North American legislations, such as  Torricelli Law (1992) and Helms Burton Law (1996) that established  and then deepened the criminal extraterritorial measures of the  blockade, euphemistically called "embargo". A dispatch of the Spanish agency EFE says Linda Bain, vice- president of communications of the Hilton hotel group, expressed that if they not accept the  orders imposed by Washington,  they could receive "fines or jail penalties, and could even be arrested if some employee of the firm enters later at North  American territory. In observance to the United States dictations, Cuban officials were expulsed from a Hilton hotel, in Oslo, Norway, to where they arrived as guests to participate in a tourist fair. It has to do with one of the most recent scandals generated by North American authorities, which have forbidden subsidiaries at other countries to maintain any type of transaction with Cuban entities, without listening to the opinion of countries where the referred companies operate neither obeying the specific laws of those countries. Likewise, they reject exports from any nation towards the United States if it comes to Cuban products or those which contain some components originated   there. Ignoring the national rights and the commercial interests of others, the sale of goods or services whose technology contains over a 10 percent of North American components was forbidden to the Island.  A year ago, a Cuban delegation was evicted from the María Isabel Sheraton hotel, at the Mexican Federal District, following orders of the Treasure Department of USA, with the pretension not to celebrate a concerted meeting there with North American entities interested in the potentialities of the Cuban energetic market. On the other hand, the federal district attorney of the south of the Florida, Alexander Acosta,  announced in October  2006,  the creation of a Working Group to reinforce the sanctions to Cuba. The relation of the entities which are part of it proves that Bush's administration does whatever to strangle Cubans. There they are to guarantee the blockade: Foreign Assets Control's Office of the Treasure Department, the F.B.I,  the Internal Revenue Service, Immigration and Customs office Control, and the Commerce Department, as well as agents of the Coastguards Service and of the Customs Office's aerial and terrestrial units and those of Borders Protection. The threat became explicit when the District Attorney announced that the violators of the blockade will be chased and would receive sanctions of 10 years of jail and fines of even one million dollars. In November,  2006,  Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS made themselves subordinate to the pressures of Washington by suspending businesses  with Havana and declaring that this country integrated a list of "sensitive" nations along with North Korea, Iran and Sudan, being that the reason why it stopped executing payments and operations with people who lived there. Since 10 years ago, the North American State Department sent letters urging   foreign companies to abandon their business with Cuba. Among them, there is the Canadian Sherritt, the Mexican DOMOS, the Israeli BM Group, the Panamanian International Motors S.A and the Spanish Sol Meliá. These are only some examples in that context. New focuses in two-chamber North American Congress, of democratic majority, claim for the end of this economic warfare against the Island. In the meantime, social protests in the world against a savage Administration  obsessed with giving orders to others, when its own disappearance is just a matter of time,  are more frequent.