Cuba, a firm friend in need for Sri Lanka and the world, is undergoing an unprecedented crisis, not of natural causes, but one imposed by human design. It’s being starved of energy, which is almost as essential as water and air for human survival today. A complete and total embargo of oil in today’s world can only spell fatal, existential disaster, coming on top of the US economic blockade of decades.
The UN Secretary General’s spokesman has expressed the Secretary General’s concern at the “humanitarian situation in Cuba” and warned that it could “worsen, if not collapse, if its oil needs go unmet”.
Cubans are experiencing long hours without electricity, including in its hospitals and laboratories which provided much needed medicines and vaccines for the world when they were most needed. Cuba which relies heavily on tourism has had to warn airlines that they have run out of jet-fuel and will not be able to provide refueling.
Cuba is being denied oil, because it is being ridiculously designated as a “sponsor of terrorism” posing a threat to the United States, the richest, most powerful country with the most sophisticated military in the history of the world.
On the 29th of January 2026, the President of the United States issued an executive order declaring that the policies, practices and actions of the Cuban Government pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat… to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and that there is “national emergency with respect to that threat”, and formally imposed what the Russian Foreign Ministry called an “energy blockade” on Cuba.
Responding within days to the US President’s executive order seeking to prevent the provision of oil to Cuba from any country, the Independent Experts of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) strongly condemned the act stating that “the fuel blockade on Cuba is a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order,” and that it is “an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion with extraterritorial effects, through which the United States seeks to exert coercion on the sovereign state of Cuba and compel other sovereign third States to alter their lawful commercial relations, under threat of punitive trade measures”.
They warn that the resulting shortages “may amount to the collective punishment of civilians, raising serious concerns under international human rights law”. They advocate against the “normalization of unilateral economic coercion” which undermines the international legal order and the multilateral institutions.
Global Concern – Will Colombo add its voice?
The Group of G77 and China which has 134 countries issued a special communique in New York stating that “these measures are contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, and undermine multilateralism, international economic cooperation and the rules-based, non-discriminatory, open, fair and equitable multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core.”
The Non-Aligned Movement also issued a communique expressing its “deep concern” at the “new extreme measures aimed at further tightening the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed against the Republic of Cuba, including actions intended to obstruct the supply of oil to the country and to sanction third States that maintain legitimate commercial relations with Cuba.”
Sri Lanka is a member of both these groups. These two statements also speak for the Sri Lankan state, as well as all other members of these groups.
However, there has been no statement so far from Colombo expressing concern. One hopes that there will be one soon. One also hopes that this administration’s rightward turn in economics doesn’t also extend to abandoning all sense of decency towards those friends who stood by Sri Lanka when it needed them. This would not bode well for us, when we need help from our friends again.
The Sri Lankan parliament has a Cuba-Sri Lanka Friendship Association. Its President is Minister Sunil Kumara Gamage who was elected to this position for the Tenth Parliament. I hope the parliamentary friendship extends to at least expressing concern and solidarity with the Cuban people and an appeal for the immediate end to this extreme measure which has had such distressing impact on Cuba and its people.
Countries like Vietnam, Russia, China, Namibia and South Africa have already issued statements.
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has issued its own statement, strongly condemning this measure, calling it a “direct assault on the Cuban people” and a “deliberate economic sabotage and strangulation”. They call for “the immediate lifting of the fuel blockade and the trade embargo” calling on “the progressive forces and countries of the world, committed to progressive internationalism, peace, and prosperity, to join the ANC in solidarity against imperialist and colonialist aggression and to take further concrete actions in solidarity with Cuba.”
Before the JVP revealed itself in power to have metamorphosed into something other than its self-description before it was elected to government, with ubiquitous Che Guevara images and quotes at its rallies and party conventions, one would have expected something at least half-way as supportive from it. However, with new glimpses and insights into its trajectory in its current incarnation, one doesn’t really know the contours of its foreign policy aspirations, preferences and fears, which have caused an about-turn in all their previous pronouncements and predilections.
On a recent TV interview, a former Foreign Secretary and Ambassador/PR of Sri Lanka to the UN in New York praised the current President’s foreign policy speech, citing its lack of ideology, non-commitment to concepts such as “non-alignment” or “neutrality” and its rejection of ‘balancing’ as beneficial to Sri Lanka’s “national interest” which he went on to define open-endedly and vaguely as “what the Sri Lankan people expect”.
While this statement captures the unprecedented opacity and indeterminate nature of the President’s foreign policy stance, it is difficult to predict what this administration stands for, supports and thinks is best for our country, the world and our region.
Despite this extreme flexibility the administration has given itself, one still hopes that a statement of concern and an appeal for a reversal of the harsh measures imposed on a friendly country and long term ally at the receiving end of a foreign executive order that violates international law, could surely be accommodated within the new, indeterminate, non-template.
FSP, Socialist Alliance stay true
Issuing a statement on February 1st, the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), the JVP breakaway, was the first to condemn and denounce the new escalation. It said in its statement that this “decision which seeks to criminalize and punish sovereign states for engaging in lawful trade with Cuba -particularly in relation to fuel supplies- represents an act of economic warfare and blatant imperialist coercion.” The FSP urged all progressive movements to “raise their voices against this criminal blockade and reject the normalization of economic aggression and collective punishment.”
The Executive Committee of the Socialist Alliance of Sri Lanka comprising the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, Lanka Sama Samaja Party, Democratic Left Front and Sri Lanka Mahajana Party, wasted no time in condemning what it called the “escalation of the decades-long criminal blockade” against Cuba by the United States. It said that the energy embargo has transformed “an inhuman blockade into a total siege” which it says seeks to “provoke economic collapse and forcible regime change”.
Socialist Alliance calls on govt. to take immediate and principled action in defence of Cuba
In its strongly worded message issued by its General Secretary, Dr. G. Weerasinghe, the alliance calls on the government to demonstrate “principled courage” and to publicly condemn the “economic siege” at all international forums including the UN. It also asks the government to co-sponsor the UNGA resolution demanding an end to the US blockade, which seems unlikely at this stage of the administration’s rightward evolution.
The Socialist Alliance concludes by saying that “Silence in the face of such blatant coercion is complicity” and that this “imperialist strategy” threatens the sovereignty of all independent nations. However prescient these words may be, the government has yet to prove that terms such as “sovereignty” and “independence” are a relevant part of its present-day lexicon.
Cuba Flotilla
The plight of the people of Cuba under the energy blockade has moved those inspired by the Global Sumud Flotilla which sailed to Palestine with aid, to initiate a similar humanitarian project for Cuba. An alliance of progressive groups has announced their intention to sail to Cuba next month carrying aid for Cubans. It is called the “Nuestra América Flotilla” (https://nuestraamericaflotilla.org/).
While Mexico and China have already sent aid, the organisers recognise the need for more. David Adler, who helped organise the Sumud Flotilla is also helping the Cuba flotilla. This effort has been endorsed by the Brazilian activist who came into prominence and gained global popularity during the Sumud flotilla, Thiago Avila.
The organizers hope that this month’s successful Mexican and Chinese aid deliveries to Cuba may indicate that unlike in the case of the Sumud Flotilla to Occupied Palestine, the aid flotilla to Cuba will reach the people of Cuba without interception.
Shape of the emerging world order
At the on-going Munich Security Conference, the German Chancellor announced that the Rules-Based-Order has ended. With Europe dealing with the real threat of the forcible annexation of Greenland by the United State, their longtime ally, it is no wonder that he declared the end of the old order.
At the same venue, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Congresswoman representing New York, questioned whether the Rules-Based-Order ever existed, when the rules seem to apply only to some. Characteristically clear-sighted and forthright, the progressive US Democrat said exceptions to the rules were carved out in the world to suit the US and when that happens too often, those exceptions become the rule. She asked if we have actually been living in a “pre-Rules Based Order”, rather than one that had already been established.
Regarding the January oil blockade of Cuba, AOC issued a statement saying that the world is entering an “era of depravity”.
The UN has long advocated against Unilateral Coercive Action, which threatens countries with trade sanctions, financial restrictions, asset freezes and blockades without authorization by the United Nations system. These have also been referred to as “private justice”, which brings home the chilling nature of these measures.
Are these ruptures with even the bare minimum of predictable behaviour in international relations, the birth-pangs of a new era emerging in a world almost incomprehensible in its behaviour towards states and peoples, starting with the genocide in Occupied Palestine? The nightmares have not yet reached their peak, only signaled their downward spiral. With enormous US aircraft carriers circling Iran, what would the fate of that country and the region and perhaps the world be, in a few weeks?
Cuba is under siege right at this moment of danger. An exemplary country which helped the world when it faced grave danger such as the time of Covid 19, Cuba and the selfless Cuban people are now in dire need.
Cuba has never hesitated to help Sri Lanka, and could be relied on unconditionally for support and solidarity at multilateral forums. Sri Lankan medical students have had the benefit of training in Cuba and Cuban medicines and vaccines have served the world, as have their doctors. And now, as Cuban Ambassador Maria del Carmen Herrera Caseiro, who as a skillful young diplomat in Geneva in 2007-2009 was helpful to Sri Lanka’s successful fightback at the UNHRC, said at the UNESCO this month, the new blockade will “directly impact Cuban education, science and the communication sectors”.
Sri Lanka has consistently voted against the decades-long economic blockade of Cuba by the United States, whichever administration was in power. This recent escalation to a full embargo of fuel supplies to this small island struggling against an already severe economic blockade, requires a response from all those who have benefited from its generosity including Colombo, and every effort to prevent a humanitarian crisis on that island.
[Sanja de Silva Jayatilleka is author of ‘Mission Impossible Geneva: Sri Lanka’s Counter-Hegemonic Asymmetric Diplomacy at the UN Human Rights Council’, Vijitha Yapa, Colombo 2017.]
