Chairwoman of the International Relations Commission condemns Euro deputy's interfering statements

HAVANA, Cuba, Jul 19 (ACN) Deputy Yolanda Ferrer Gómez, president of the International Relations Commission of the National Assembly of People's Power, condemned the interference statements issued by MEP David McAllister.

The following is the full text of Yolanda Ferrer's statement:

"MEP David McAllister, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, has allowed himself to make provocative statements on the situation in Cuba that are anthological for their ignorance, cynicism and bad faith.

Far from mentioning that Cuba is facing a soft coup, orchestrated and financed by the United States to destabilize the country, he joins the media campaign from positions that bury truth and ethics, and ends up meddling in the internal affairs of Cubans.

McAllister departs from the position of the European Union and repeats the messages of the extreme right-wing machinery in Florida.

He calls the political system built in Cuba since 1959 a dictatorship. Not only does he offend 86% of Cuban voters who supported the Constitution proclaimed on April 10, 2019, and pretends to ignore the unity and consensus that has allowed us to resist six decades of aggressions by the first economic and military power in the world, but he blames the country for flagrant and repeated violations of human rights that actually exist in societies in our region, and even in his own, which he continues to consider democratic.

Cuba is a Socialist State under the rule of law. Of the hundreds of murdered, disappeared, mutilated or raped Latin American citizens, activists and social leaders, none is Cuban, even if in our case they are agents in the service of a foreign power or common criminals who are the protagonists of acts of hatred and violence.

Where did Mr. McAllister go to school? McAllister who does not understand the statistics or does not know how to read that in Cuba the State shows an exemplary effort to protect its population from the pandemic; that, at the most complex moment in terms of the number of contagions of the COVID-19, places Cuba in 19th place in the Americas; that it has been able to produce the first two Latin American vaccines to combat the disease; that its vaccination rate -at the close of July 11- is the highest in the world; that even under an intensified blockade during the pandemic, Cuba regrets every death and today registers one of the lowest case fatality rates in the world: 0.66% compared to 2.15% in the world and 2.61% in the Americas.

Instead of inventing a humanitarian crisis, Mr. McAllister should at least listen to the citizens of Europe who benefited from the solidarity of the Cuban medical brigades in confronting the pandemic.

McAllister accuses us of having an economic system that causes chronic shortages of food, medicines and other basic services, only to timidly recall economic sanctions that pose a challenge to Cuba's development. He does not dare to admit that we are dealing with an economic,

commercial and financial persecution of a genocidal nature such as no people has ever suffered, or that a few weeks ago the United Nations General Assembly once again demanded almost unanimously the end of the blockade imposed by the U.S. government against Cuba.

Dare, Mr. McAllister, to defend the right of European businessmen and banks to negotiate freely with Cuba, prevented from doing so by the extraterritorial laws of the United States.

If you do not respect, Mr. McAllister, the intelligence and civility of the citizens of Europe, do not forget that the Cuban people know how to make themselves respected".