If anybody tells you that the Cuban embargo is not real, just remind them that such embargo, with Donald Trump’s consent, just impeded the delivery of essential medical supplies donated by Chinese tycoon Jack Ma to Cuba for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

 “Things for Cuba are always more difficult. Even in times of pandemic, Cubans are not allowed to breathe easy,” Carlos Pereira, Cuba’s ambassador to China wrote on the blog of the Cuban Embassy. 

The Jack Ma Foundation, creator of the Alibaba company, had donated face masks, rapid diagnostic kits for coronavirus and artificial respirators.

 “The criminal blockade by the imperial government violates the human rights of the Cuban people,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on Twitter on Wednesday

Díaz-Canel is very much on target, of course. No right is more fundamental than the right to life. And it is the right to life the one being criminally violated by Washington when, in the middle of a pandemic that has killed more than one million people all over the world, it doesn’t allow life-saving medical supplies to be delivered to Cuba because of political, ideological or electoral reasons.

Without a doubt, it is a crime against humanity.