International Lawyers Decry US Aggression Against Cuba, Urge Solidarity With Its People

An international group of leftist lawyers on Tuesday condemned the US blockade, sanctions, and war threats against Cuba, and the mounting repression of solidarity with the long-suffering Cuban people.The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) held a virtual press conference to condemn escalating United States measures against Cuba and to call for renewed international action in defense of international law, Cuban sovereignty, and the rights of the Cuban people.The United States continues to threaten Cuba while imposing unilateral coercive economic measures designed to destabilize the country and facilitate regime change, IADL noted. In recent months, restrictions on fuel shipments have further intensified the hardships faced by the Cuban people, with severe consequences for daily life.For more than three decades, the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly called for an end to the US blockade of Cuba, with the United States and Israel consistently standing alone in opposition to the international consensus, the group added. While these annual resolutions represent a powerful condemnation of the blockade, symbolic measures alone are insufficient. International law imposes obligations on states to act in the face of ongoing violations.Speakers at the press conference warned that the Trump administration's recent actions—including war threats and a deadly fuel blockade—are serious violations of international law that threaten the rights and well-being of millions of Cubans.The illegality of the blockade is not in doubt. What is at stake today is the impunity that allows it to continue, IADL general secretary Micòl Savia said. What is at stake is the complete disregard of the United States for international law and collective institutions and their contempt for the common values of humankind.The actions of successive US administrations against Cuba make it very clear that they do not consider themselves bound by the principles of sovereign equality, peaceful coexistence, and self-determination that form the foundation of the international legal order, she continued.“Another dimension of the blockade and sanctions against Cuba is the pressure imposed on third countries, Savia said. The threat of punishment against institutions, banks, companies, and individuals that seek to establish commercial, financial, or diplomatic relations with Cuba is an intervention not only against Cuba, but also into the sovereign sphere of other countries.This shows how broad and arbitrary the sanctions policy has become as a tool of coercion, she added. The threat of sanctions against companies from third countries that trade with Cuba violates their sovereignty.”Speakers at the event excoriated the Trump administration's escalating war threats and politically motivated indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, a hero of his country's successful revolution against a US-backed dictatorship.Cuba is now under the direct threat of [a] US imperialist war of aggression after a long period of economic and financial blockade, said Filipino jurist Edwin De La Cruz of the Amistad Philippines-Cuba Friendship Association and National Union of People's Lawyers.Serious transgressions on Cuba’s sovereignty, from failed efforts to foment unrest among the population, to the personal assault on the integrity of Comrade Raúl Castro by [President] Donald Trump intensified, with a threat of armed invasion tweeted by Donald Trump himself, he continued.Cuba and the Philippines share a common history of US imperialist domination. We share a common enemy and a common struggle, De La Cruz noted, pointing to the so-called Spanish-American War, in which the United States conquered both countries, along with Puerto Rico and Guam, from Spain under the false pretense of a Spanish attack on the battleship USS Maine. The US colonized the Philippines from 1898-1946, except for a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II.Deborah Jackson, president of the US group National Conference of Black Lawyers, called the Castro indictment a transparently political prosecution that serves no legitimate law enforcement purpose.Castro—who served as Cuba's president for a decade after his older brother, Fidel Castro, stepped down in 2008—was indicted by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) last month for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a counter-revolutionary group founded by a CIA-trained operative and Bay of Pigs veteran, after repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.Critics noted Trump's ongoing campaign of illegal boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, as well as the long history of US state terrorism against Cuba and support for the perpetrators of attacks carried out by right-wing Cuban exiles, including the 1976 bombing of a commercial flight with 73 people aboard.Jackson said the charges against Castro are clearly invalid... attempts to criminalize legitimate acts of self-defense by a sovereign nation that have been brought nearly three decades after the incident in question against a 94-year-old former head of state who will never be extradited to the United States.Kerry McLean, an international human rights attorney with the National Lawyers' Guild in the United States, warned that “the indictment of Castro, a foreign leader and former head of state, threatens a repeat of the illegal abduction on January 3, 2026 of Venezuela’s president and his wife.Trump ordered the invasion and arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores on dubious drug trafficking, illegal weapons possession, and narco-terrorism charges. The DOJ has since admitted that the cartel which Trump claimed was led by Maduro does not, in fact, exist.McLean added that the US invasion of Venezuela—during which more than 75 people, including 32 Cuban members of Maduro's security team, were killed—violated the UN Charter, a treaty that, under the US Constitution, is the supreme law of the land.Speakers at the IADL event also decried US efforts to intimidate, investigate, and criminalize solidarity organizations.“Like the designation of Cuba as a 'state supporter of terror' and the designations of many of the leading organizations and figures of the Cuba solidarity movement, these organizations and individuals are designated and targeted to impose state terror on the Palestine and Cuba solidarity movements, divide people from their homelands, and blunt the effectiveness of any opposition to US imperialism, IADL deputy general secretary Charlotte Kates said.The aim of such designations is not only to prohibit financial transactions, but to isolate those organizations and individuals that the US views as key networks of solidarity against imperialism and to prevent meaningful action to bring its crimes to an end, she contended.Savia said, “Those who remain silent in the face of this growing unlawfulness and aggressiveness assume a grave responsibility, particularly when such conduct is carried out by one of the most powerful and heavily armed states in the world.By letting these policies continue unabated, she added, and by applying double standards and selectivity while granting widespread impunity to rich and powerful states, they contribute to the erosion of the international legal order and pave the way for a world without the rule of law.