Cuba was elected Thursday vice president of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, also known as the Committee of the 24, exclusively in charge of promoting a decolonization agenda.
Upon assuming the post, the Cuban UN representative Pedro Nuñez Mosquera thanked the committee for the appointment and said he considered it an acknowledgement to Cuba’s commitment to the eradication of colonialism in the world.
Cuba takes on the vice presidency of the committee on the beginning of the third international decade for eradication of colonialism, when there are still 16 non-self-governing territories listed by the UN, in addition to the colonial situation of Puerto Rica.
Nuñez Mosquera denounced the media wall seeking to silence the claim of the Puerto Rican people for its independence and slammed the repression unleashed in that country against university students.
The Cuban official said the decolonization committee can’t remain inactive before such situations.
The UNs’ official List of Non-Self-Governing Territories includes Anguila, Bermuda, Caiman Islands, Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands), Turks and Caicos Islands, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, St Helena, Gibraltar and Pitcairn, all under U.K control.
The list also comprises American Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa (the three dominated by the U.S.), New Caledonia (France), Tokelau (New Zealand) and Western Sahara (former Spanish colony, currently occupied by Morocco).
The decolonizing committee considers the Puerto Rican situation as a special case and is leading efforts to include it back in the list of colonial territories.(ACN)
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