On July 11, 2021, thousands of Cubans took to the streets of the Caribbean island to protest against the executive led by Miguel Díaz-Canel, denounce his management and demand freedom for the Cuban people.
They were historic demonstrations that put the Castro government in check and whose images, with people carrying signs with the slogans “We are more” and “We are not afraid”, went around the world.
The United States reacted immediately to these protests and both Republican and Democratic legislators came out to support the marches “for the freedom of Cuba.”
New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez, of Cuban origin, described these protests as “a historic day.”
“The entire world has witnessed how thousands of Cubans were forced to take to the streets to demand the end of the dictatorship in their country. Despite the day-to-day persecution on the island, the Cuban people have united courageously to ask that they be allowed to live safely and speak their minds freely and without fear,” he added in this regard.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz was convinced that “the Cuban communist regime will be thrown into the dustbin of history” and denounced the actions of the Cuban government, noting that “generations of Cubans have been brutalized and denied freedom.”
On the second anniversary of these historic marches, members of both parties in the United States Congress met in Miami, Florida, to participate in a special session of the Congressional Foreign Relations Committee to commemorate this day and support these movements. whose purpose is to “achieve the freedom of Cuba”.
“Cubans want to live like anyone else”
During the special session, the Republican representative for Florida, María Elvira Salazar, lamented that “after 60 years of Castro’s dictatorship” they are still fighting “to bring freedom” to the Caribbean island.
“We have the privilege of being first-generation Cuban-Americans. But we cannot forget what our ancestors lived through and what Cubans continue to experience on the island,” Salazar said during the special session.
In addition, he stressed that “Cubans are like any other person in the Western Hemisphere,” stressing that “they want freedom, they want to travel, they want to feed their children, they want to be able to marry, study and find happiness according to their own needs.”
In this sense, Salazar, who serves as the president of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the United States Congress, denounced that the Cuban government continues to use “a repressive apparatus” against the people, for which she considers that this is the main reason for which it has not yet been possible to achieve “freedom” that was so demanded in those historic marches of July 11, 2021, and that they also commemorate from the political sphere of the United States.
The meeting was also attended by Republican legislators Mario Díaz-Balart and Michael Waltz, and on the Democratic side, representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jared Moskowitz, who have long expressed their support for the Cuban people.
The presence of China in Cuba
The meeting also discussed US intelligence reports that China is strengthening its infrastructure for data collection in foreign countries. In fact, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, admitted that when the executive led by President Joe Biden took office in 2021 they were aware of Beijing’s movements.
“We have been made aware of a number of sensitive efforts by Beijing around the world to expand their overseas logistics, base and data collection infrastructure, to allow them to project and maintain military power at a greater distance,” Blinken explained a few weeks ago. .
Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, who also attended the Miami meeting, warned that these movements by the Asian giant pose “a clear danger to the national security of the United States” and that “they cannot be tolerated.”
In this sense, Wasserman Schultz also called the approaches of China and other countries such as Russia and Iran “absolutely unacceptable” and defended the continued application of sanctions.
“We cannot allow the repression to continue, so we have to continue to apply sanctions and make sure that the regime understands that the only way is to join the democratic peoples, allowing free and fair elections,” he said.
The organization Justicia 11J, in charge of ensuring the rights of protesters in Cuba, confirmed to the voice of america that in the historic marches of July 11, 2021, 1,558 people were arrested and that 682 are still in prison.
They demand more sanctions
The Cuban dissident Rosa María Payá, daughter of the late activist and leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Payá, also participated in this special session at the emblematic Museum of the Assault Brigade 2506.
Like the Republican and Democratic legislators, she also called for the implementation of more sanctions on the Cuban government to limit its movements and minimize “the Chinese military presence in our territory.”
“The United States should expand individual sanctions to include Cuban regime officials, monitoring military projects, Chinese military and security agents in Cuba,” he said.
According to Payá, in 2022 there were more than 3,000 protests on the island. “And they continue today because people are convinced that to get out of the crisis, we must get rid of the dictatorship, and that is why we decided to propose a roadmap to make it possible through the mobilization of citizens,” he added. about the marches that have been taking place in Cuba to protest against the government of the island.
Cuba says the United States is behind the protests
For its part, the Cuban government accused the White House of having “direct responsibility for the riots of July 11 and 12, 2021” because “from its territory individuals and groups were openly incited and financed to commit violations of the law”.
“This included actions of violence, robbery, assault, aggression, in addition to the fact that a campaign of disinformation and slander was carried out from there, during previous weeks, through digital networks,” reads an editorial published in the granma newspaperproperty of the Communist Party of Cuba.
In addition, the newspaper criticized that “the Miami terrorist machine uses” social networks and the media “to call for chaos, violence, aggression against the authorities, terrorism and civil disobedience.”
“So far this year, more than 300 calls of this type have been registered from the territory of the United States and other countries that encourage action against the Cuban government, the manipulation of claims due to situations created by the destabilizing machinery itself,” the statement added. Granma publishing house.
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