The Cuban government issued this Tuesday a statement rejecting the docking between July 5 and 8 of a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine at the naval base that that country has maintained in Guantanamo Bay for 121 years.
The island’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) described the presence of the submarine as a “provocative escalation by the United States, whose political or strategic motives are unknown,” through a text published on its website.
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The statement also stresses that the military base “has no strategic or military importance to the United States” and notes that so far there has been “no information” from the U.S. government regarding the “political or strategic reasons” for the submarine.
“The presence there of a nuclear submarine at this moment forces us to question what is the military reason for the event in this peaceful region of the world, against what objective it is directed and what strategic purpose it pursues,” the Cuban Foreign Ministry said in its statement.
The text emphasizes the rejection of “the U.S. military presence in Cuba and the demand that the illegally occupied territory in the province of Guantánamo be returned,” referring to the 117 square kilometers currently occupied by the military installation.
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In turn, it values as a “danger” the “presence and circulation of nuclear submarines of the United States armed forces in the nearby Caribbean region.”
The MINREX recalls that the United States maintains the naval base in operation “against the will of the Cuban people” and considers this decision as a “colonial remnant of the illegitimate military occupation of our country that began in 1898,” after the U.S. intervention in Cuba’s war of independence against Spain.
The statement says that the permanence of the naval base on the eastern tip of the island “only responds to the political objective of trying to violate Cuba’s sovereign rights.”
The Cuban Foreign Ministry stressed that the military installation has been used in recent decades as a “center for the detention, torture and systematic violation of the human rights of dozens of citizens from various countries.”
Since January 2002, the base has housed a prison in which prisoners from Afghanistan have been held, where most of them accused of terrorism remain to this day, although some have never been tried.
The Cuban government protested the stay of the nuclear submarine to reiterate the “rejection of the U.S. military presence in Cuba and the demand that the illegally occupied territory in the province of Guantánamo be returned.”
