2024-03-18 17:57:39
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Rare protests have broken out in Cuba with tensions rising over power outages and food shortages during an economic crisis in the Communist island nation.
Small groups of demonstrators marched on Sunday in Santiago, the second-largest city, calling for “power and food” in the country that relies on its allies Russia and Venezuela for fuel and food supplies.
Dozens of protesters might be seen gathering on the outskirts of the city, regarding 800km from Havana, the capital, in videos that circulated on social media before internet services went down on Sunday night.
Demonstrations were reported in other provinces around Cuba, where protests are rare and usually met with repression. Havana does not yet appear to have been affected.
“We are aware of reports of peaceful protests in Santiago, Bayamo, Granma, and elsewhere in Cuba, with citizens protesting the lack of food and electricity,” the US embassy posted on X on Sunday night. “We urge the Cuban government to respect the human rights of the protesters and address the legitimate needs of the Cuban people.”
Washington has maintained a trade embargo once morest Cuba, which is just 153km from the US at the closest point, since the Caribbean island’s revolution led by the late Fidel Castro in the 1950s.
Cuba has been at loggerheads with Washington since the revolution, most notably in 1962 when the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles to the island in response to US warhead deployments to Turkey, in what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
On Monday morning, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel blamed the current unrest on “mediocre politicians and social media terrorists organised from South Florida”, where many Cuban exiles live.
“In the midst of a blockade that aims to suffocate us, we will continue working peacefully to get out of this situation,” posted Díaz-Canel, who in 2021 succeeded Fidel Castro’s brother Raúl as leader.
A US State Department spokesperson on Monday said the accusation that Washington was behind the protests was “absurd” as Cuba summoned the US’s top diplomat in Havana to a meeting. Havana’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the US had not observed “minimal standards of decency and honesty” in its comments on the protests.
Cuba is mired in an energy and economic crisis that has worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic. Inflation last year ran at 30 per cent, according to the central bank, and there are frequent power blackouts and shortages of food and medicine.
The government in February raised petrol and diesel prices more than 400 per cent in an attempt to stabilise the economy, as part of a gamut of spending cuts and price increases that are heaping more pain on destitute Cubans. Economy minister Alejandro Gil Fernández was sacked last month, with the government saying he is under criminal investigation.
Havana also requested food aid from the UN’s World Food Programme last month, an unprecedented move for a country that has long resisted publicly acknowledging its inability to produce enough food for its people.
Protests are exceedingly rare in Cuba and are often met with repression when they do break out. Mass protests over the floundering economy in 2021, the largest since the revolution, led to hundreds of arrests and more than 700 criminal charges. More than 400,000 Cubans have sought refuge in the US since 2021.
Amid the current crisis and previous ones, Cuba has relied on its alliances with the authoritarian governments of Russia and Venezuela, both under US sanctions, for fuel and food.
As protesters gathered in Santiago on Sunday evening, Díaz-Canel was among the first to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election in a vote regarded by the west as a sham.
“Our sincere congratulations on the re-election of President Vladimir Putin,” Díaz-Canel posted on X. “We will continue to strengthen ties between Cuba and Russia, in sectors identified for the wellbeing of our people.”
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