Democrats in Congress Condemn U.S. Sanctions on Cuba as “Inhumane”

Pocan and Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-OR) took to the House floor to condemn the U.S. government’s “inhumane” policy toward Cuba a week after visiting the island — something Secretary of State Marco Rubio has never done.

U.S. policy is reaching “new levels of sadism against the Cuban people,” according to Pocan.

"We are hurting the very people we profess to care about," he said, adding that the blockade persists "not for national security reasons, but for political reasons."

Dexter, who is a physician, met Cuban doctors facing shortages of basic surgical supplies.

"The American people need to know that their government is intentionally suffocating the nation of Cuba," she said.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) also spoke before the House of Representatives, noting that infant mortality in Cuba has doubled to 9.9 per 1,000 births, and childhood cancer survival rates have dropped from 85 to 65 percent since the embargo tightened. 

"What we are witnessing in Cuba, as some have characterized, is basically Gaza in slow motion," McGovern said. "Man-made starvation with the help and complicity of the United States of America."

Last week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) pressed Assistant Secretary of State Caleb Orr on whether he was aware that the Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment.

When Orr deflected, blaming "the Cuban regime," Jayapal cut him off. "Obviously you don't know, so let me tell you what it is," she said.

Jayapal then referred Orr to a declassified 1960 State Department memo stating the goal of U.S. sanctions was to "deny money and supplies to Cuba" and "bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government." 

Sixty years later, she said, that goal hasn't been realized — but the Cuban people "have been essentially destroyed."