[Epoch Times, July 23, 2021]Not long ago, Cuba, an island nation in the Caribbean Sea, a neighbor in the backyard of the United States, overturned. More than 11 million hungry, poor, and honest Cubans are fed up with the communism that Marx, the Russian Lenin, and Mao Zedong from China passed through the air, and the Castro brothers took over the operation of communism for more than half a century. The people took to the streets and shouted the slogan “Down with the Communist Party.” The largest anti-communist regime’s protest in decades that broke out on July 11 has aroused global attention.
Economic collapse, vaccine shortage and dictatorship became the fuse of protests
The BBC reported on July 12 and 13 that Cubans were angry at the economic collapse, restrictions on civil liberties by the authorities and the handling of the epidemic. Last year, severely hit by the virus epidemic and U.S. sanctions, the Cuban economy shrank by 11%, the worst decline in the past 30 years. In recent days, the number of infections in Cuba has also recorded a new high.
On July 11, Cuba’s unprecedented anti-government protest demonstration started in San Antonio de los Baños, a city in southwestern Havana, and soon swept the country. People marched in cities including Havana, the capital of Cuba, shouting “Freedom!” and “Down with the dictatorship!” “The Cubans can’t stand it anymore,” a protester said. Many people were arrested in the conflict that broke out in Havana. The police used pepper spray and beat some demonstrators.
On this island that has been ruled by the Communist Party for decades, the authorities banned any demonstrations, but the people’s sense of crisis made them overcome the ban and fear.
Many protesters were broadcast live on social networks, and the marchers chanted slogans against the government and the new President Carnell who succeeded Castro, calling for change.
A protester who called himself Alejandro told the BBC, “It’s today: we can’t stand it anymore. No food, no medicine, no freedom. They won’t let us live. We’re tired.”
Images posted on social media showed that security forces detained and assaulted some protesters. People overthrew police cars and robbed some state-owned stores denominated in foreign currencies and expensive. For many Cubans, these shops are the only way for them to buy basic necessities.
Cuba reported nearly 7,000 daily infections and 47 deaths on Sunday. Since the outbreak, Cuba has reported more than 1,500 deaths related to the CCP virus. Protesters expressed great anger over the shortage of vaccines and the threat of survival.
U.S. and European politicians support the Cuban people to protest against the Communist government
According to a report by Al Jazeera, Cuban leader Diaz Canel accused the “Cuban Mafia instructed by the United States” to be behind these protests.
However, US Secretary of State Anthony Brinken said on the 12th that the Cuban leader blamed the United States for the country’s unprecedented protests, which was a “serious mistake”.
US President Joe Biden said in a statement issued at the White House: “The United States calls on the Cuban regime to listen to the opinions of its people and meet their needs at this critical moment, instead of continuing to increase its own wealth.”
Biden said: “We support the Cuban people, support their call for freedom, support them to get rid of the clutches of the new crown epidemic, and support them to get rid of the oppression and economic suffering caused by the authoritarian regime for decades.”
He added: “The Cuban people are bravely exercising their basic rights. The authorities must respect these rights, including the right to protest peacefully and the right to self-determination in a free manner.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said after the EU foreign ministers’ meeting on the 12th: “We support the right of the Cuban people to protest peacefully. We call on the Cuban authorities to allow demonstrations and listen to protesters’ grievances.”
Social media helps Cuban people fight violence
The Cuban leader blamed the protest movement on “counter-revolutionaries” funded by the United States and the terrible social media movement, and quickly took control.
Internet surveillance service company NetBlocks said that after the largest anti-government protests in decades, Cuba restricted access to social media and information platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp.
The Epoch Times previously reported that more than 1 million people in Cuba use anti-censorship tools supported by the US government every day to evade the Cuban government’s blockade of social media such as Facebook.
Psiphon, which is committed to providing breakthrough Internet censorship software, said that since Cuba banned many social media sites from logging in on July 11, it has provided Cuban users with more than 600 megabytes of data transmission.
Psiphon, a non-profit organization based in Toronto, has a proxy server that can avoid Internet censorship and is funded by the US “Open Technology Fund”. The fund belongs to the US government and aims to support global Internet free technology.
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, USA, praised the technology on Twitter on July 16. Blackburn said in a tweet: “Scoop: More than 1.3 million Cubans have access to the Internet today, thanks to @PsiphonInc, this open source tool has won the Bipartisan Open Technology Fund (Open Technology Fund) advocated by me and my colleagues. Support.” “We must stand with those who oppose the dictatorship.”
Federal senators support the Cuban people
U.S. Senator Mark Rubio said in an interview with the U.S. media Newsmax on July 13 that the Cuban regime attributed the country’s protests and its economic crisis to the result of U.S. trade sanctions. This is “purely a lie”; Protesters who took to the streets against the Cuban regime did not ask the United States to lift the restrictions. This was proposed by those who supported the communist regime.
Rubio is a descendant of Cuban immigrants. He said, “If the Cuban people can trade freely, if they have open and independent businesses, they will be prosperous, but they don’t.” “The Cuban military is a Marxist and a socialist. , They control everything”. Rubio said that socialism has ruined people’s lives, people cannot get economic prosperity, there is no security and freedom.
Rubio has continuously tweeted and forwarded videos of the protest scene in the past few days to support the Cuban people and expose pictures of the Cuban military and police arresting people at the scene. He said in a tweet: “The people of Cuba are protesting against the 62 years of socialism (regime) full of lies, tyranny and suffering, not out of fear of the rising COVID-19 virus and death.”
On the evening of July 14, the “Black Life Guild” (BLM) organization with communist ideas issued a statement condemning the embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba and blaming the U.S. government for the riots on the streets of Cuba.
Several U.S. Republican lawmakers, including Rubio, objected to this statement, believing that “black life is expensive” is on the side of the Cuban communist regime, rather than protesting the people.
Rubio said in a tweet on July 15 that since “Hei Minggui” supports the Cuban Communist regime, he can help them immigrate to Cuba. “My office is always ready to help the leader of the “Hei Minggui” immigrate to Cuba.” A Florida Republican said in a tweet.
Rubio has a deep understanding of the nature of the Cuban regime. He pointed out: “The blackmail gang organized by the people called the “Hei Minggui” extorted millions of dollars from the company to buy luxury homes for themselves. Today they pulled out and shared their support for the Cuban Communist regime.”
According to a report earlier this year, Marxist Patrise Cullors, the founder of the “Hei Minggui” movement, has at least four real estate properties, three of which are in white areas. According to the information released by the Associated Press in March, Carlos’ “Hei Minggui” organization absorbed more than 90 million US dollars in donations last year. But apart from frequently organizing destructive protests, no one knows what else they have done.
The leader of the Cuban Communist Party rarely shows weakness and apologizes to make the CCP nervous
Under the strong pressure of public opinion at home and abroad, Cuban governor Canel apologized for his weakness. In addition to blaming the unrest on the United States again on Wednesday, he admitted for the first time that the government’s shortcomings played a role in this.
According to a report by Al Jazeera, Carnell stated that “we must learn from the riots” and “we must also conduct a critical analysis of our problems in order to take action to overcome these problems and avoid their recurrence.”
Canel called for “peace, harmony and respect among Cubans” and added, “In addition, it may be necessary to apologize to those who are confused and abused in the chaos caused by such incidents.”
At the same time, although access to social media and messaging services is still restricted, activists said that intermittent Internet outages eased slightly on Wednesday.
Judging from the consistent evil of communist dictatorships that never apologize to the people, Carnell’s weakness made the CCP fearful, for fear of a knock-on effect, triggering the Chinese people’s accountability to the evil party. Therefore, in addition to vigorously blocking “negative” public opinion, Beijing has repeatedly sent war wolves to turn their attention away from the United States in order to deceive the people in order to control the direction of public opinion.
On July 14, the Chinese Communist Party media Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily Online respectively stated that the Cuban Foreign Minister and the Cuban Embassy in China condemned and accused the United States of participating in the protests.
On the 13th, the spokesperson of the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, claimed that the U.S. blockade had caused a shortage of supplies in Cuba and declared that “China believes that under the strong leadership of the Cuban party and government, Cuba will be able to maintain social stability”. When Zhao Lijian made a whitewashing speech for the Cuban authorities to “maintain social stability”, the Cuban government was suppressing the people.
In this regard, Chen Weijian, editor-in-chief of “Beijing Spring” magazine, told The Epoch Times that the CCP and Cuba’s accusations against the United States are totally untenable. Cuba is the same as the CCP. All internal problems and common people’s protests against the regime are all accusations. It was planned by the United States, which is the consistent view of the Communist Party.
He analyzed that the CCP was very afraid of this protest in Cuba. It only talked about the economy and the epidemic. It would never say that the Cuban people were targeting the communist regime. “It dare not report this way because it will affect China. People, if Cuba succeeds in becoming a democratic country, the blow to the Chinese Communist regime will be very, very big.”
Feng Chongyi, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney and an expert on China issues, also said that the CCP cannot completely block news and can only report some news, but it dares not report political slogans such as “overthrow the Communist Party” because this is what it is very worried about.
Professor Feng Chongyi hoped that this protest of the Cuban people could become a “Cuba Spring” (similar to the “Arab Spring”) and overthrow the one-party dictatorship. The “Arab Spring” is a democratic movement that broke out in the Arab world in 2011. It began with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia in 2010. Then in 2011, people in many Arab countries took to the streets, demanding the overthrow of the autocratic system and fighting for basic democratic rights. . @
Editor in charge: Gao Yi
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