As Cubans demand freedom, Díaz-Canel says he will not tolerate ‘illegitimate’ protests
As residents in Havana and other cities continue demonstrating against the government and its response to Hurricane Ian, security forces have beaten and arrested some protesters, and Cuba’s handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, warned the population that “counterrevolutionary” behavior like blocking the streets will be punished.
Since the storm slammed into the westernmost past of the island, Cubans around the capital and other cities have taken to the streets marching, banging pots and pans, blocking roads and demanding the government restore basic services like electricity and water. Ian damaged the already crippled electrical grid and caused the entire country to go dark on Sept. 27.
Many demonstrators have also been demanding political liberties, chanting “Freedom!”
Díaz-Canel broke his silence about the situation on Sunday and called the protests “indecent” and “illegitimate” during a visit to the western province of Pinar del Río, where three people died and several lost their homes during the storm.
“Unfortunately, there is a group of people who, in a very vulgar way, I would say in an indecent way, regardless of the problems they have, make demands from a position of total misunderstanding, challenging and offending the very people who are in charge of solving their problems,” Díaz-Canel said.
“We cannot allow that. Demonstrations of this type have no legitimacy,” he added, before calling the protesters’ actions “counterrevolutionary” and claiming that demonstrators are being financed from abroad.
He also warned that those who commit “vandalism” like blocking the streets or throwing stones “will be met with the rigors of the law.”
After the government shut down the internet on Thursday and Friday night, images of state repression started to circulate during the weekend. The videos show what witnesses described as recruits in the military service and plain-clothes Interior Ministry officers armed with sticks threatening demonstrators and arresting some during a protest in Playa in Havana.
Cuban independent outlet 14ymedio also reported that recruits and plain-clothed state security and police officers beat and arrested peaceful demonstrators in the Havana neighborhood of El Vedado who had blocked the main Línea Avenue and were chanting for freedom Saturday night.
Videos taken by a witness to the protest and shared with the Herald show the moment two military trucks arrived at the site carrying the officers. Other videos published on social media show the moment the crowd yelled “marionetas” — puppets — at government officials who showed up in hopes of dissipating the demonstration. The Associated Press caught the violence that ensued later that evening on camera.
Justicia 11J, a group that tracks detentions of activists in Cuba, said they had confirmed at least 20 arrests during the Saturday evening demonstrations in Havana and Baracoa, a city in the eastern province of Guantánamo. One of the detainees in El Vedado, José Adalberto Fernández Cañizares, received medical treatment in the nearby Calixto García hospital before being transferred to a detention center, Justicia 11J said on Twitter.
“They started beating even minors, 15-, 16-year-old adolescents. The repression was brutal,” said Adrián Cruz, an activist known as Tata Poet, who was among those arrested in El Vedado. He was later released and shared his account on Facebook.
He said security forces beat a young man so hard that they “disfigured his face.” His girlfriend, activist and circus performer Rosmery Almeda, is still under detention, he said.
On Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Havana urged Cuban authorities “to respect the right of the Cuban people to protest without repression or arrests and to allow unrestricted use of the Internet.”
“We stand in solidarity with the Cuban people affected by Hurricane Ian and who are expressing themselves in a peaceful protest,” the embassy said in a tweet in Spanish.
