The United States government announced sanctions against Cuban officials for their role in the government’s response to the July 2021 protestsaccording to international media reports.
The State Department confirmed this Saturday that for this reason it will impose travel restrictions on 28 island officials, including a group belonging to the state media.
The restrictions will suspend “the entry for non-immigrants to the United States of officials and employees of the Cuban Government and the Cuban Communist Party” (PCC), according to a statement issued this morning by that government entity, cited by the agency EFE.
Although the announcement, which is signed by the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, does not go into detail about the name and position of the people who will be affected by these sanctions, it does specify that among them there are “high-level members” of the PCC. “responsible for determining national and provincial policies”, refers to the Spanish media.
The head of US diplomacy accused these officials of allowing or facilitating police violence and the imprisonment of hundreds of protesters, while demanding the “immediate and unconditional” release of those detained.
the @StateDept has taken steps to impose visa restrictions on 28 Cuban officials. These 28 officials are restricting Cubans’ human rights and fundamental freedoms. We call on the regime to unconditionally and immediately release all those unjustly detained.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) July 9, 2022
Several officials “who work in the state communications and information media sectors and who formulate and implement policies that restrict the ability of Cubans to freely access and share information” were also included in the travel restrictions, the statement said.
In accordance with EFEthe State Department accuses these people of “spreading disinformation” about the protests and the government response to them.
After learning of the announcement, the Cuban government reacted through the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla stated on Twitter that the sanctions were “acts in violation of International Law and the UN Charter” and considered the official response to the protests as a “popular victory against imperialist aggression.”
Facing failure in trying to provoke in #Cuba a popular uprising in 2021, govt. The US and its Secretary of State are now seeking to discredit the popular triumph in the face of imperialist aggression. Its repeated coercive measures are acts that violate International Law and the UN Charter.
– Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) July 9, 2022
Rodríguez Parrilla’s statements are in tune with similar statements by the Cuban government, including those issued by President Miguel Díaz-Canel this Friday at a meeting with artists and writers from the island, in which he assured that on July 11, 2021 “socialism stopped a vandalistic coup d’état” in reference to the massive protests that took place in different parts of the country.
The island’s authorities and media insist that the demonstrations were organized and encouraged from the United States as part of a plan to promote “a change of system” and overthrow the socialist government. Washington, for its part, has said that the protests expressed the popular will of Cubans and has denied its participation in the events.
It is not the first time that the United States has imposed visa restrictions on Cuban officials because of their relationship with the protests in July of last year. As he remembers EFEAs early as January, the State Department made a similar announcement about eight other officials, whose identities it also did not reveal.
Then, in June, he sanctioned another five.
The US considers imposing “forceful” sanctions on Cuban officials
The demonstrations of July 11, 2021, of which this Monday marks one year, had among their causes the shortage of food and medicine, the long power cuts and the effects of the economic crisis, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. 19 and the tightening of the US embargo.
These demonstrations, unprecedented on the island in more than six decades and which included peaceful marches, confrontations with the police and looting of state establishments, were followed by a wave of arrests of hundreds of participants.
According to the Cuban Prosecutor’s Office, more than 700 people have been prosecuted for these events, including young people between 16 and 17 years old, although activists and independent organizations estimate a higher number of detainees.
EFE / OnCuba
