Special forces soldiers patrol at Prado Avenue following the demonstrations in Cuba, Havana on July 21, 2021.
Yander Zamora | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
WASHINGTON – The United States enforced sanctions on Cuba’s defense minister and the communist country’s unique forces brigade for the repression of tranquil demonstrations that broke out on the island recently.
The sanctions mark the primary steps by the Biden administration to use pressure on the Cuban federal government as Washington deals with contacts us to reveal higher assistance for the protesters.
President Joe Biden cautioned the Cuban federal government that there will be more to come.
“This is just the beginning – the United States will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people,” the president stated in a declaration Thursday. Previously, Biden stated the U.S. stands “firmly with the people of Cuba as they assert their universal rights.”
The Treasury Department singled out Cuban defense minister Alvaro Lopez Miera, for having “played an integral role in the repression of ongoing protests in Cuba.”
The sanctions forbid payments from entities in the United States to Lopez Miera and the unique forces, along with payments frm the Cuban entities to the U.S.
Over a week back, countless protestors filled the streets over aggravations with a maimed economy struck by food and power lacks. The unusual demonstrations, the biggest the communist nation has actually seen given that the 1990s, come as the federal government has a hard time to consist of the coronavirus pandemic, pressing the island’s vulnerable health-care system to the verge.
On the heels of the demonstrations, President Diaz-Canel Bermudez stated his program was “prepared to do anything” to stop the demonstrations, according to a report from The Washington Post. “We will be battling in the streets,” he stated, including that the United States remains in part to blame for the extensive discontent in Cuba.
A day later on, he appeared together with members of his federal government and blamed U.S. trade sanctions for hindering Cuba’s development.
Reacting to the Cuban president’s remarks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed press reporters recently that the United States was not to blame for the shopping list of problems afflicting Havana.
Blinken stated that Cubans were “tired of the mismanagement of the Cuban economy, tired of the lack of adequate food and, of course, an adequate response to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
“That is what we are hearing and seeing in Cuba, and that is a reflection of the Cuban people, not of the United States or any other outside actor,” Blinken stated.
