RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Friday questioned U.S. President Joe Biden’s concern about the crisis on the island after Sunday’s anti-government protests and maintained that Washington “has failed in its efforts to destroy Cuba”.
If Biden “had sincere humanitarian concern for the Cuban people, he could eliminate the 243 measures applied by President Donald Trump, including the more than 50 cruelly imposed during the pandemic, as a first step towards ending the blockade,” Díaz-Canel wrote on Twitter.
“The U.S. has failed in the endeavor to destroy Cuba even though, to achieve it, it has wasted billions of dollars,” he asserted.
The Cuban ruler referred to the restrictions imposed by Trump that included limitations on U.S. travel to the island, the sending of remittances, and sanctions on foreign companies with business in the country.
The current occupant of the White House ruled out the day before the possibility of reestablishing in the short term the sending of remittances to Cuba, restricted since last November by his predecessor Trump.
In a press conference in Washington and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, visiting the northern nation, Biden also evaluated the possibility of donating vaccines to Cuba in the face of the health crisis, one of the triggers of Sunday’s demonstrations.
He added that his government is studying whether it has “the technological capacity to restore” mobile Internet access in Cuba, which has been cut off for five days.
Biden added that Cuba is a “failed state” that “represses its citizens”.
On this, Diaz-Canel replied today that “a failed state is one that to please a reactionary and blackmailing minority is capable of multiplying the damage to 11 million human beings ignoring the will of the majority of Cubans, Americans, and the international community.”
Thousands of Cubans took to the streets on Sunday to protest against the government shouting “freedom!” on an unprecedented day that resulted in dozens of arrests and clashes after Diaz-Canel urged his supporters to go out and confront the demonstrators.
The protests, the strongest to have occurred in Cuba since the so-called “maleconazo” of August 1994, took place with the country mired in a serious economic and health crisis, with the pandemic out of control and severe shortages of food, medicines, and other basic products, in addition to long power outages.
Cuban authorities have not yet provided official data on those detained and missing, while international organizations, activists, and lists circulating on social networks put the number in the hundreds.
In response to calls from the international community for the release of the detainees, the Cuban ruler affirmed this week that those arrested would have “procedural guarantees” and “will receive the application of the laws in their fair measure, without abuses.”