A group of civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, trade unions and po­lit­i­cal move­ments gath­ered out­side the Unit­ed States Em­bassy at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day to protest the US eco­nom­ic block­ade of Cu­ba, de­scrib­ing it as il­le­gal and harm­ful to the Cuban peo­ple.

Speak­ing at the demon­stra­tion, David Ab­du­lah, an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the As­sem­bly of Caribbean Peo­ple (ACP), read a joint state­ment on be­half of Trinidad and To­ba­go–based or­gan­i­sa­tions ex­press­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with Cu­ba and con­demn­ing “uni­lat­er­al co­er­cive mea­sures” im­posed by the US.

Ab­du­lah said the decades-long block­ade amounts to col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment and vi­o­lates in­ter­na­tion­al law and the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter.