Two significant votes at the United Nations in recent weeks have split the usual Caribbean community (Caricom) foreign policy solidarity on key issues and laid bare the level of pressure some member states are facing to comply with edicts from the Trump administration or face varying forms of punishment.
The first was the usual vote about lifting the stifling, decades-old US economic embargo against Cuba. The second involved a vote on laying over an important resolution regarding the International Criminal Court (ICC) that the US is steadfastly opposing and desperately trying to dismantle.
Normally, the 15-nation bloc would vote en masse for the removal of the embargo since the island is facing severe shortages of medicine, complete shutdowns of its electricity grid, and dire food shortages that have pushed thousands to leave the country each day.
However, the vote last month showed observers and political watchers which countries are either stridently lining up behind U.S. policies carte blanche and which are playing political and diplomatic ball by trying to avoid punishment like visa restrictions, by either abstaining or ensuring their delegations are absent from the room when roll calls are being taken.
On the actual Cuba vote, resource-rich Trinidad, which had allowed the US military to use local facilities to prepare for military action against neighboring Venezuela and ousted President Nicolas Maduro earlier this year, voted with the US, Israel, and a few other nations against ending the blockade against Cuba. Not far behind were Guyana and Jamaica, both of which abstained in an apparent bid to avoid incurring the wrath of Washington. Of the others, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, and Suriname said they all wanted to see an end to the embargo and voted for it, while Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica made sure that their delegations abstained. St. Lucia, Antigua, and Dominican delegations were not present for the vote.
Anticipating criticism, Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar defended the vote, saying the federation with Tobago was unapologetic about its stance.
“We respect the sovereign right of other nations to determine their foreign policy, and we expect that same respect in return,” Persad Bissessar said in a post. “Those persons in Trinidad and Tobago who support dictatorship in Cuba would never support it in our own country. There is nothing romantic or idealistic about dictatorship masked as a revolutionary struggle for freedom. Our position is against military dictatorship and supportive of the Cuban people’s right to democratically elect a government of their choice.”
Jamaica’s government spokesperson and information minister was adamant that there were no external factors in Jamaica deciding to abstain. “There was no one influencing Jamaica. Jamaica is a sovereign nation and Jamaica made a decision to abstain,” she said, while Kamina Johnson Smith at foreign affairs noted that “we did not vote ‘against’ because we do not support unilateral action in accordance with the UN charter, and we did not vote ‘for’ because it is clear that continuing to do the same thing each year to support the resolutions, simplicita, with not only no improvement in the circumstances, but in fact, a deepening of the humanitarian crisis and suffering, this does not serve the benefit of the Cuban people,” she said.
If anyone doubted allegations about the US exerting pressure on some of the small island nations to line up behind the US by accepting a large number of third-country, non-national deportees, all they had to do was to pay attention to how Dominica and Antigua played it safe by abstaining.
At the end of last year, the State Department imposed severe tourist visa restrictions on these two eastern Caribbean nations and rubbed political salt into their wounds by mandating that applicants lodge visa bonds of up to $20,000 as they board planes and head to the regional embassy in Barbados to apply for visas. Latest indications are that very few visas have been issued to applicants from these two nations for most of this year as pressure for them to accept additional deportees mounts.
The other key vote at the UN had to do with the court— the ICC, which goes after war criminals, people involved in genocide, and those who commit other heinous crimes.
In choosing to abstain from voting, Trinidad raised global eyebrows because former President and Prime Minister Ray Robinson had been one of the leading advocates for establishing the court and even served as an early judge. That the twin-island republic ignored his legacy and abstained from voting set off criticism at home and abroad.
Former Foreign Minister Amery Browne labeled the abstention as unprincipled. “Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Minister Sean Sobers have now turned their unprincipled and destructive hands toward the International Criminal Court. They continue to disgrace our foreign service and our national sovereignty with every decision that they make in the international and regional arena, without exception,” he said.
