Omar Condemns Cuba Oil Blockade as “Economic Warfare” Amid Third Total Blackout

The U.S.’s oil blockade on Cuba, a small island country already suppressed from decades of a comprehensive U.S. embargo, amounts to “economic warfare,” the purpose of which is to “suffocate” the country, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) said on Saturday as Cuba was plunged into its second nationwide blackout in a week.

“We must lift the US oil blockade on Cuba. This is economic warfare designed to suffocate an island,” Omar wrote on social media on Saturday. “Food is spoiling. Water supply is compromised. Healthcare services are disrupted. End the blockade now.”

She expressed solidarity with the hundreds of activists on a humanitarian aid and solidarity convoy to Cuba that began arriving in the country over the weekend.

The Nuestra América convoy is bringing solar panels, food, and medicine to the country, carrying tons of aid in an attempt to alleviate the U.S.’s humanitarian catastrophe in the nation. Approximately 650 activists from dozens of countries are on board the flotillas, including popular online streamer Hasan Piker and Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi.

Conditions in the country are dire. Following the U.S.’s illegal abduction of Venezuela’s president in January, the Trump administration imposed an embargo on oil exports from the country — the number one oil provider for Cuba.

This is layered on top of an illegal comprehensive economic embargo that the U.S. has maintained on the communist country since the 1960s, barring it from doing any trade or commerce with U.S. businesses or citizens, which has failed to topple its left-wing government while costing the island billions in losses and having devastating effects on life in the country.

As a result of the enhanced embargo, Cuba suffered its third nationwide blackout of March on Saturday, with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel saying that it hasn’t received oil from foreign suppliers in three months.

The blackouts have created severe disruptions to daily life in Cuba. The government, which can only produce 40 percent of the oil and gas it needs to operate, has cut down activities to bare necessities as it tries to ration fuel. Hospitals, for instance, survive only on generators when the blackouts arrive, but the shortage of fuel means that the generators can’t be powered. Because of the prohibitive cost of motored transportation, meanwhile, anyone needing medical care has to arrive on foot, bicycle, or otherwise.

“We cannot allow this collective punishment. We cannot normalize it,” said David Adler, coordinator for one of the Nuestra América convoy’s organizing groups, Progressive International.

The atrocities wrought by the U.S. blockade comes as the U.S. is waging war on Iran, another country that has faced decades of heavy sanctions by the U.S. Critics have long said that sanctions are a form of warfare in themselves; a recent study found that U.S. and EU sanctions on Cuba and other countries have killed 38 million people since 1970.

Death and suffering is often the explicit goal of sanctions: When it first issued sanctions against Cuba in 1960, the State Department said in a memo that the reasoning was “to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.”

Donald Trump has openly opined about Cuba being next on his list for a regime change operation. Last week, the president said that he’ll be “having the honor of taking Cuba,” and that he can “do anything I want with” the country and its population of 10 million people.