U.S. Removes Cuba From Terrorism List
With less than a week left in office, the Biden istration has issued a surprise announcement that it is removing Cuba from the list of states that sponsor international terrorism and lifting other Trump-era sanctions against the island nation, as an apparent quid pro quo for the phased release of 530 Cubans imprisoned after street riots in July 2021.
According to a statement issued yesterday from the White House, the Biden istration has been “informed by the Catholic Church that the Cuban government will soon begin releasing a substantial number of political prisoners.”
The statement noted that “in taking these steps to bolster the ongoing dialogue between the government of Cuba and the Catholic Church, President Biden is also honoring the wisdom and counsel that has been provided to him by many world leaders, especially in Latin America, who have encouraged him to take these actions, on how best to advance the human rights of the Cuban people.”
In addition to removing Cuba from the State Department’s terrorism list, the White House stated it would once again waive Title III of the 1996 Helm’s-Burton legislation that allows U.S. companies and individuals to sue international companies that are operating on expropriated properties in Cuba. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama had all similarly waived that provision of the legislation, but President Trump imposed it during his first term.
The White House also said it would terminate the Trump-era “Restricted Entities List” which prohibits U.S. companies and citizens from engaging with Cuban businesses that are istered by the military. In addition to that list, the istration said it would end “additional regulations on engagement by U.S. persons and entities with Cuban persons and entities.”
The 11th hour accord, negotiated between Washington and Havana through still-secret back-channel diplomacy, involved the Cuban Catholic Church, as well as Pope Francis who played a role a decade ago in a clandestine talks between the Obama istration and Raúl Castro to normalize relations. President Biden was scheduled to meet the Pope at the Vatican on January 10, but cancelled his trip because of the fires in Los Angeles; the two conferred via phone instead.
Human rights advocates applauded Biden’s diplomacy to win the release of the prisoners, many of whom were incarcerated after violent street protests against shortages of food and medicine during the pandemic in July 2021, and removal of Cuba from the SSOT list. “We welcome this long-overdue step toward a diplomatic policy grounded in facts rather than political fervor,” said María José Espinosa, Executive Director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas (CEDA). “At the eleventh hour, the Biden istration has shown what diplomacy can do. Today is proof that isolation is not the way to promote freedom, economic opportunity, and for human rights–engagement is.”
But incoming Trump appointees were quick to denounce Biden’s gestures toward Cuba, and to assert they would be reversed. Mauricio Claver-Carone, who handled Cuba policy at the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, and who has been named as a special envoy to Latin America, predicted that the incoming istration would go beyond reissuing the sanctions, and make them “bigger and harder, with broader effects than last time…We’ll get the last laugh.”
