State Department leader Rubio stated he had sanctioned some top officials and their ‘cronies’ for their ‘brutality towards the Cuban people’. The US State Department sanctioned top Cuban officials, such as President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced, while he was commemorating the fourth anniversary of a violent crackdown on historic antigovernment demonstrations.
On X, Rubio stated that the State Department would be “limiting visas for Cuban regime leaders”, including President Diaz-Canel, Defence Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera, Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas, and their “cronies” for their “role in the brutality of the Cuban regime against the Cuban people”.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, also announced that the State Department has added the Torre K hotel to its restricted list of entities to “prevent US dollars from funding the Cuban regime’s repression”.
The government has marketed luxury high-rise Torre K in downtown Havana as an emblem of modernisation. But the regime has been under fire for its heavy investment in high-end hotels during a crippling economic crisis in the nominally socialist single-party state.
“Meanwhile, the Cuban people go without food, water, medicine, and electricity, the regime is spending money on its insiders,” Rubio said. A further ten “regime-linked properties” were also placed on the State Department’s List of Prohibited Accommodations, it added in a statement.
Four years ago, thousands of peaceful Cubans marched through the streets calling for freedom from tyranny to be their future. The Cuban regime reacted with violence and repression, arbitrarily detaining thousands, including more than 700 who remain in prison and under torture or abuse,” the State Department added.
Rubio also blamed Cuba for torturing pro-democracy activist Jose Daniel Ferrer, whose bail was withdrawn as he was arrested together with fellow dissident Felix Navarro in April.
“The United States calls on immediate proof of life and the freeing of all political prisoners,” Rubio said. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez criticised the latest steps as a component of a “ruthless economic war” waged by US President Donald Trump’s administration.
The USA can impose migratory penalties on revolutionary figures and wage a long and merciless economic war on Cuba, but it cannot crush the will of these individuals or their leaders,” he tweeted on X. In January, the then-US President Joe Biden had taken Cuba off the blacklist of nations patronising terrorism.
But Trump brought the nation back to the blacklist upon his immediate return to the White House as he revived his “maximum pressure” strategy against Cuba that characterised his foreign policy in his first term.
