The massive protests that broke out on Sunday on the island against the Cuban government led to a series of arrests of young protesters and opponents who use social networks to alert the international community about the violation of human rights, while the regime accuses the United States of fueling demonstrations to destabilize the country.
Our reporter Luis Medina closely followed the demonstrations in front of the UN building in New York City, and reports how young exiles have taken the lead in the mobilizations.
But the protests not only generated the solidarity of the Cuban community in our tri-state region, they also encouraged immigrant communities throughout Latin America to take to the streets in support of the outcry on the island.
The protests are the most significant and massive since the “maleconazo” of August 1994, when the Cuban people also raised their voices against the Castro regime. Now, they occur in the face of the serious economic and health crisis, with the pandemic out of control and an acute shortage of food, medicine and other basic products, in addition to countless power cuts.
The slogans “down with the dictatorship” and “homeland and life” lit the fuse of the demonstrations in the town of San Antonio de los Baños, in Artemisa (west), after a day of blackouts. And from that point, the mobilizations spread across the island to regions in the United States where there is a significant commune community in exile, including New Jersey and New York City.
While in the streets of Havana, the forces of the regime and the brigades of government supporters have clashed with the peaceful demonstrations, leaving a trail of violent clashes and arrests; In our region, young Cubans cry out to President Joe Biden to intervene and help restore the internet on the island.
The slogans “down with the dictatorship” and “homeland and life” lit the fuse of the demonstrations in the town of San Antonio de los Baños, in Artemisa (west), after a day of blackouts. And from that point, the mobilizations spread across the island to regions in the United States where there is a significant commune community in exile, including New Jersey and New York City.
The organization Amnesty International reports that the Government maintains a strong military presence in the streets and that protests have been repressed with extreme violence, with worrying reports of injuries, threats and arbitrary arrests.
The Biden administration has said that it is “extremely worrying” that President Díaz-Canel summons his supporters to “combat”, at the same time that he defended the “freedom of expression and assembly” of Cubans.
And in the Big Apple, the call to defend the civil rights of the Cuban people persists, and the international visibility of the “SOS Cuba” campaign is enlivened on social networks.
Our reporter Luis Medina and our photojournalist Oel Alonso closely followed the demonstrations in front of the UN building in New York City, and they report how young exiles have taken the lead in the mobilizations.
Many of the activists who have taken the leadership of the demonstrations in our region are so young that they were not even born when the “maleconazo” occurred in 1994, the protests that could be “the beginning of the end” of the communist regime, in power. since January 1959.
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