Posted on June 19, 2017

Cuba Will Not Return US Fugitives to United States

RT, June 19, 2017

Assata Shakur

Black cop-killer Assata Shakur has avoided imprisonment by living in Cuba since the ’80s.

Cuba is rejecting the demands by US President Donald Trump, including the extradition of those US fugitives it regards as fighters for civil rights. The island nation will never negotiate its independence and sovereignty, the Cuban foreign minister said.

The new measures announced by Trump on Friday will only “strengthen our patriotism, our dignity, and our determination to defend by all means our national independence,” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said at a press conference in Vienna, after meeting with his Austrian colleague.

The US government “has no moral authority to lecture us on human rights and democracy,” Rodriguez said, pointing to the US incarceration rates, police abuses, and violations of rights of minorities, immigrants and Muslims.

At one point picking up Trump’s trademark Twitter style, Rodriguez quoted the US president’s statement in Saudi Arabia that the US is “not here to tell other people how to live,” but that his Cuba announcement was “quite the opposite. Sad!”

The Cuban FM repeated Havana’s position that the US blockade – in effect since 1962 – is unjust, inhumane, genocidal, and violates international law.

Cuba will not make any concessions regarding its sovereignty and independence, it will not negotiate its principles, and will not accept any precondition, Rodriguez said.

While Havana will not respond until the US measures are officially implemented, Rodriguez said that what Trump announced looks to hurt US businesses, taxpayers and citizens, as well as the very Cuban people he supposedly seeks to champion.