Thousands of Cubans joined together in the streets of multiple cities including the capital Havana, to protest against their Communist government. The BBC reports marchers shouted, “down with the dictatorship!”
The Communist government has forced its people to live in a collapsing economy, “as well as by restrictions on civil liberties and the authorities’ handling of the pandemic” reports the BBC. “The protesters were demanding a faster coronavirus vaccination programme after Cuba reported a record of nearly 7,000 daily infections and 47 deaths on Sunday.”
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel went on television to urge his supporters to take to the streets and defend the revolution. He referred to the 1959 uprising which ushered in the decades of Communist rule in Cuba. Diaz-Canal said the protests were a provocation by mercenaries hired by the US to destabilize the country.
“The order to fight has been given – into the street, revolutionaries!” said Diaz-Canal during his television address. United States diplomat for Latin America, Julie Chung, tweeted of the uprising: “we are deeply concerned by ‘calls to combat’ in Cuba.”
She added, “We stand by the Cuban people’s right for peaceful assembly. We call for calm and condemn any violence.” Social media posts showed people overturning police cars and damaging state-owned shops “which price their goods in foreign currencies.”
The shops, for many Cubans, “are the only way they can buy basic necessities but prices are high” reports the BBC. One protester who only gave his name as Alejandro, told the BBC “this is the day. We can’t take it anymore. There is no food, there is no medicine, there is no freedom. They do not let us live. We are already tired.”
