https://themilitant.com/2020/01/18/us-govt-puts-restrictions-on-charter-flights-to-cuba/
US gov’t puts restrictions on charter flights to Cuba
article
BY ROY LANDERSEN
Vol. 84/No. 3
January 27, 2020
In the U.S. rulers’ latest move to ratchet up their almost
six-decade-long economic war on the Cuban Revolution, the administration
of President Donald
Trump announced Jan. 10 it would bar all charter flights to nine
regional airports in Cuba. It also capped charter flights to the
international airport
in Havana at last year’s level of 3,600 round trips. These new
restrictions go into effect after “a 60-day wind-down period.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the move was to further impede “the
Cuban regime from gaining access to hard currency from U.S. travellers.”
Promoting
Washington’s slander campaign against the Cuban Revolution, Pompeo
claimed the new strictures were retaliation for the Cuban government’s
“ongoing oppression
of the Cuban people” and “support for dictator Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.”
The U.S. rulers — under Democratic and Republican administrations alike
— have targeted Cuba’s socialist revolution since workers and farmers
overthrew
the Washington-backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in 1959 and took
political power into their own hands.
The U.S. government continues to try to bring down the Venezuelan
government, despite being frustrated by the failure of the opposition
politicians it
backs to oust Maduro. Washington has since sanctioned any oil tankers
that take Venezuelan petroleum to Cuba. It hopes to weaken and undermine
both the
Cuban Revolution and the Venezuelan government.
The ban on charter flights to provincial airports will mainly affect
thousands of Cuban Americans wanting to travel to the island to visit
relatives. Over
half a million such visits took place last year.
Charter flights to Cuban cities have expanded since Washington banned
commercial flights to all Cuban airports except Havana last December.
Anti-Cuba lawsuits thrown out
Two days earlier Washington suffered a reversal when a federal court in
Miami threw out lawsuits against Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and MSC
Cruises
over their use of the Havana cruise terminal. The administration opened
the floodgates for suits like this when it ended the longstanding
suspension of
Title III of the notorious Helms-Burton Act that invites relatives of
prerevolution capitalist property owners to sue for damages because the
revolution
nationalized their assets.
Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean Cruises, facing a similar
lawsuit, are likely to use this decision to seek to have their cases
dismissed as well.
All of these suits have been pushed by Mickael Behn, grandson of the
capitalist owner of the company that ran Havana’s docks before 1959.
Cuban officials report that nearly 900,000 people took cruises to the
island in 2018. Carnival had plans for more routes and cruises before
the Trump administration
imposed a ban on cruise ships to Cuban ports last June.
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