‘Hands Off Cuba!’: Left Groups in Europe Mobilise Against US

Hundreds of people joined solidarity actions for Cuba in Brussels over the weekend, protesting the blockade imposed by the United States on the socialist island. Demonstrators, including Latin America solidarity groups, trade unionists, and left politicians, demanded an end to the illegal blockade, the delivery of humanitarian aid and oil, and the continued operation of Belgium’s embassy in Cuba, which the so-called Arizona coalition has decided to shut down.

The first protest took place in central Brussels on Saturday, February 7, followed on Monday by the projection of the message “Hands off Cuba!” onto the European Commission building. “Europe and Belgium cannot remain silent any longer,” the group Cubanismo said on the occasion. “It is time to dare to stand up to Trump’s imperialism and to send aid to the Cuban people.”

Protesters warned about the effects of Donald Trump’s latest decisions to further tighten the blockade on Cuba, stressing that the oil embargo is bringing large parts of the economy and essential services – like hospitals, ambulances, and food distribution – to a standstill. “Cuba is being punished because, since 1959, it has made a different choice: to use its resources for its people, to invest in free education and healthcare, and to show solidarity with other peoples,” Cubanismo wrote on Sunday. “That is precisely what imperialism cannot tolerate.”

Source: Peter Mertens/X

“The violence of imperialism does not look the same everywhere,” the group added. “In some places it is visible and immediate, elsewhere, it works slowly and suffocatingly through sanctions and blockades. But the logic is the same: peoples are not allowed to decide their own future.”

“Yet Cuba remains standing tall,” Cubanismo concluded. “Even under blockade, it has sent doctors around the world while others exported weapons. That deserves not silence, but solidarity.”

As the Trump administration has assaulted or threatened progressive governments in Latin America, European governments have largely remained silent, once again revealing striking double standards in their treatment of international affairs. While EU representatives and mainstream political actors failed to denounce both the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and the tightening of the illegal blockade against Cuba, left parties and grassroots groups rallied against this latest iteration of US imperialism.

Recent days have also brought more mobilizations in support of Venezuela’s sovereignty in Italy, culminating in a national assembly on February 8. Organizations involved in organizing the assembly and protests, including the left party Potere al Popolo, have announced further demonstrations next month in solidarity with Venezuela, Cuba, and other Latin American countries.

“The blockade of Venezuelan oil and the threats directed at the Mexican government should it continue supplying oil to the island constitute a true act of ‘economic terrorism’ by Trump,” Potere al Popolo wrote in an earlier brief, noting that this is an integral part of US national security guidelines and has a clear objective of “imposing total unilateral domination over the continent.”

“Cuba poses no danger to the United States or to any other country,” the group added. “The only country making the world less safe is the United States, which continues to attack the sovereignty of peoples across the globe through military, economic, and political interference.”

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch