One dead scores arrested in Cuba protests: Officials
Havana, Cuba - One person has died in the anti-government protests across Cuba, according to officials, with activists saying at least 100 people have been arrested and scores remain in detention as demonstrations overseas in solidarity continued.
The rallies are the largest since the Cuban revolution of the 1950s and come as the country endures its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with chronic shortages of electricity, food and medicine, just as it records a spike in coronavirus infections.
Cuba’s San Isidro free speech protest movement published late Monday a list of 144 people held or reported as disappeared following the demonstrations in dozens of cities and towns.
A 36 year old man died during a protest on the outskirts of Havana on Monday, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday, according to the state news agency, which named him as Diubis Laurencio Tejeda and said he had taken part in ‘ disturbances’.
Demonstrators had chanted ‘down with the dictatorship’ before being dispersed by police in about 40 different locations across Cuba on Sunday, but about 100 protesters again gathered in the capital Havana Monday evening, shouting ‘ down with communism’.
Relatives and friends of those detained during and after the historic demonstrations engaged in a desperate search on Tuesday for news on their whereabouts.
“They took him from the house handcuffed and beaten, without a shirt, without a mask,” said a 50 year old woman who did not wish to give her name, asking after her 21 year old son at a police station in the capital.
“They took many from the neighbourhood, young and old.”
On Tuesday Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denied there had been a ‘social outbreak’, insisting that the people still support ‘the revolution and their government’.
Repression
Havana blamed the show of discontent on the United States - which has placed Cuba under sanctions since 1962 - pursuing a ‘policy of economic suffocation to provoke social unrest in the country’.
But Washington pointed the finger at ‘decades of repression’ in the one-party communist state.
In Miami and the US capital, Cuban-Americans rallied in support of the anti-government demonstrations, with smaller scale protests also breaking out in Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay.
Cuba’s Catholic Church called for ‘understanding’, adding ‘the people have the right to express their needs, desires and hopes’.