CHINA is leading calls on behalf of 26 nations for the US and its allies to immediately lift punitive sanctions on other countries in order to help defeat coronavirus.

Beijing’s UN ambassador Zhang Jun said “unilateral coercive measures” violate the UN Charter, multilateralism and undermine the right to health.

The United States has intensified sanctions against Venezuela and Iran since the pandemic started and tightened its illegal blockade of Cuba. 

It has also intervened to prevent medical assistance reaching Cuba — blocking a shipment of Chinese medical equipment bound for the island — and the decision by Washington and its allies to recognise unelected opposition politician Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s president was used by the International Monetary Fund to deny an emergency loan to Venezuela to help tackle the pandemic, on the grounds that there was “no clarity” internationally as to who Venezuela’s government was.

Presenting a joint statement on behalf of 26 countries from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, Mr Zhang said that “global solidarity and international co-operation are the most powerful weapons in fighting and overcoming Covid-19. We call for the complete and immediate lifting of unilateral coercive measures.

“This is particularly relevant in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. UN senior officials and the international community have recognised the heavy negative impact of these measures,” he said.

The European Union, which has imposed sanctions on Venezuela, Syria and Belarus among other countries, denied that its sanctions “affect the delivery of humanitarian aid or medical goods to limit the effect of Covid-19.” The United States did not respond to the challenge.

The 26 said that the application of sanctions, overwhelmingly by the US and its allies, was generally aimed at developing countries and helped entrench a racist world order.

Their statement slammed “chronic and deep-rooted racial discrimination, police brutality and social inequality,” naming US black men George Floyd and Jacob Blake as victims.

And it noted that “the Covid-19 [mortality] rate of minorities, in particular people of African descent, is disproportionately high in some countries,” while expressing “deep concern” over the healthcare available to refugees in “immigration detention centres in certain countries that reflect a contemporary form of racial discrimination.”