The United States announced its first sanctions on Friday against Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel for his role “in the Cuban regime’s brutality toward the Cuban people.”<\/p>\n
It is the latest in a series of measures by US President Donald Trump’s administration to increase pressure on the Cuban government.<\/p>\n
The United States was restricting visas for the Cuban president and other high-ranking government officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an X post on the fourth anniversary of historic anti-government protests in Cuba.<\/p>\n
Demonstrations rocked the island in July 2021 as thousands took to the streets to protest shortages of basic goods and worsening economic conditions.<\/p>\n
Hundreds were arrested, one person died and dozens were injured in the lagest protests since Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution.<\/p>\n
The State Department said it was sanctioning “key regime leaders… for their involvement in gross violations of human rights.”<\/p>\n
Officials sanctioned included Defense Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera and Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas.<\/p>\n
The United States was also taking steps to sanction Cuban judicial and prison officials linked to the “unjust detention and torture of July 2021 protestors.”<\/p>\n
“While the Cuban people suffer shortages of food, water, medicine, and electricity, the regime lavishes money on its insiders,” Rubio said.<\/p>\n
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed the measures on X, saying the United States cannot “bend the will of its people or its leaders.”<\/p>\n
In May, the Cuban foreign ministry summoned the US envoy to Havana to protest his “interference” in the country’s internal affairs.<\/p>\n
The United States has a six-decade-old trade blockade in place against Cuba.<\/p>\n
– Political prisoners –<\/p>\n
Rubio took to X to accuse Cuba of torturing dissident leader Jose Daniel Ferrer and demand “proof of life.”<\/p>\n
“The United States demands\u00a0immediate proof of life and the release of all political prisoners,” Rubio said.<\/p>\n
According to the United States, 700 people are still imprisoned for taking part in the July 2021 protests. Human rights organizations put the number at between 360 and 420.<\/p>\n
Some of the convicted protesters have been released in recent months after serving their sentences.<\/p>\n
Others, including Ferrer — leader of the dissident group Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) — were released as part of a Vatican-mediated agreement in January after former US president Joe Biden removed the island from the blacklist of countries sponsoring terrorism.<\/p>\n
But at the end of April, Ferrer’s parole was revoked, prompting criticism from Washington, which has put Cuba back on the blacklist after Trump returned to power.<\/p>\n
The State Department also added the “Torre K,” a 42-story hotel in Havana, to its restricted list of entities off-limits to Americans, “to prevent US dollars from funding the Cuban regime’s repression.”<\/p>\n
The establishment, recently inaugurated in a central area of the Cuban capital, sparked criticism of the government’s huge investment in new hotels at a time when tourism is declining.<\/p>\n
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