HAVANA.- (ACN) The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement on the aggressions of the Organization of American States (OAS) against Venezuela. Cuban News Agency now reproduces the full text of the statement:

Simón Bolívar Hall which, in an affront to the Liberator, is occupied by the decadent and shameful Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS), this March 28, was witness to the battle of his descendents -children of the Bolivarian Hugo Chávez - in defense of Venezuela and Our America's sovereignty, independence, self-determination, and dignity.

The battle unleashed was one of principles, against imperial and oligarchic pretensions to abridge the right of peoples and states to free themselves, exercise their sovereignty, and create the political, economic, social and cultural system they freely choose.

The OAS now confronting Venezuela is the same organization that has endorsed aggression and military intervention, one which has maintained the silence of an accomplice in the face of serious violations of democracy and human rights throughout the hemisphere, including, among others, coups, forced disappearances of persons, arbitrary detentions, torture, and assassinations of students, journalists, and social leaders; forced displacement caused by poverty and violence; walls, deportations, unequal trade, environmental pollution, drug trafficking, and cultural aggressions.

The current OAS campaign is obviously parallel to that of 1962, when the target was Cuba. The Ministry of Colonies once again commits the same mistakes; once again it is making operational the intense pressure and extortion of the United States against a group of countries, including the smallest and most vulnerable; once again a submissive attitude is apparent on the part of those who prefer to bow down and submit before the giant with seven-league boots.

The role of executioner has been taken by a Senator and unsuccessful aspirant to the imperial throne, in the last Presidential elections, who will go down in history as evidence of the need to change the toxic relationship between this America and ours.

Confirmed is the sureness of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, approved by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, in its insistence on the principle of treating each other respectfully and fraternally, and at the same time, as independent states, demanding that we be treated as equals.

The OAS once again showed its inability to control the abominable and hysterical posture of its Secretary General, at the service of the centers of power and in blatant violation of the letter and spirit of the pitiful organization's own Charter. With sufficient eloquence, it was made clear that the Permanent Council intervened in the domestic affairs of one of its member states, in a flagrant violation of Article 1 of the foundational Charter.

Nonetheless, it was not possible to impose a decision against Venezuela on the Permanent Council, or give continuity to attempts to invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter against this country with the goal of obtaining its suspension, or approve any malicious, interventionist report or plan.

It was made clear that Venezuela is not alone. The valiant defense of those who asserted Latin American and Caribbean dignity, standing on the side of truth, reason and justice, is a source for pride. The OAS, its Secretary General and owner, could not take on the Bolivarian Chavista Revolution led by the unbowed

Presidente Nicolás Maduro Moros, or the civil-military union of the people which he heads.

While ignominy and insolence thrashed in Washington, in Caracas, the valiant people, whose human rights and democratic liberties were strengthened by the Revolution, supported their government and celebrated in the streets this moral victory and that of Bolivarian ideas.

Havana, March 28, 2017