For the 34th consecutive year, the UN General Assembly voted on Oct. 28 to approve the resolution on “the Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Embargo Imposed by the United States of America,” presented by the Cuban government to end the life-threatening U.S. blockade first imposed on Cuba in 1962. After some five hours of debate over Oct. 27-28, this year’s vote of 130-17 with 25 abstentions compared unfavorably with last year’s of 165-7 with 12 abstentions. Several nations that had previously voted for the resolution either voted against it or abstained, and some nations for the first time didn’t vote at all.

Although Cuban officials still saw the vote as a sign of overwhelming support, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel had warned a few days earlier that the U.S. State Department’s thuggish campaign of threats and harassment of UN member states might lead some of them, out of fear, to change their vote. The ruthless U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had ordered U.S. embassies abroad to threaten heads of state and government with visa revocation, reprisals against diplomats’ family members, or even loss of U.S. financial assistance if their UN representatives backed Cuba’s resolution. Cuban officials in New York and Havana reported that many foreign diplomats had described the United State’s campaign of intimidation, which U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, while speaking at the UNGA session, vehemently denied.