Thousands of Cubans on Sunday took part in rare protests against the communist government, chanting “Down with the dictatorship,” as Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel called on his supporters to confront the demonstrators.
The anti-government rallies started spontaneously in several cities as the nation endures its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with chronic shortages of electricity and food.
Several hundred protesters marched through Havana, chanting “We want liberty,” with a heavy military and police presence deployed after demonstrators massed outside the Capitol building.
Photo: AFP
Police used tear gas to disperse crowds, and at least 10 people were arrested, while officers used plastic pipes to beat protesters, Agence France-Presse journalists said.
Diaz-Canel delivered a combative television address, saying: “The order to fight has been given — into the street, revolutionaries.”
“We call on all revolutionaries of the country, all communists, to go out in the streets where these provocations occur ... and to face them in a decisive, firm and courageous way,” he said.
The only authorized gatherings in Cuba are normally Communist Party events, but according to the data journalism site Inventario, 40 protests took place on Sunday.
Social media showed scenes from anti-government protests around the country, but mobile Internet — which was only introduced in 2018 — was largely cut off on Sunday afternoon.
Several thousand protesters, mainly young people, took to the streets of San Antonio de los Banos, a town 30km southwest of Havana.
One local, on condition of anonymity, said that she participated in the demonstration as she was exasperated by “the situation with electricity and food.”
Security forces arrived soon after the protests began, and the president later visited the town himself, surrounded by party activists as residents heckled him, videos posted online showed.
“The energy situation seems to have produced some reaction,” Diaz-Canel told reporters, blaming US sanctions imposed by former US president Donald Trump and left unchanged by US President Joe Biden.
He accused “a Cuban-American mafia” of whipping up the protests on social media.
Candido Abrines, a retired pro-government protester, said he was demonstrating so that “capitalism will never come back here again and [so] that these mercenaries paid by the Empire [the US] will never again take our streets, first they have to kill us all.”
Government supporters also held some counterdemonstrations in Havana.
An Associated Press (AP) videojournalist was assaulted by a number of them of them, and an AP photojournalist was injured by the police, the news agency said.
The US reacted swiftly to the day’s events.
“The US supports freedom of expression and assembly across Cuba, and would strongly condemn any violence or targeting of peaceful protesters who are exercising their universal rights,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan wrote on Twitter.
In Miami, thousands of Cubans and Cuban-Americans took to the streets of the city’s Little Havana district in support of the protests, on foot or waving Cuban flags out of car windows.
“These young people today have finally said: ‘Enough is enough and we’re going to do what our old folks couldn’t do,’” Cuban-American Yanelis Sales said. “Cubans, we are here with you from the United States.”
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