Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on Monday lauded Cubans who marched on Havana’s Malecon promenade and other areas demanding freedom from the authoritarian island government.
Anti-government protesters voiced their disapproval over the lack of food, inflation, and the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. The demonstration was the largest the country has seen in recent history.
“The call for freedom and basic rights by the people of Cuba peacefully taking to the streets and marching is an act of great courage,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted Monday morning. “I support the Cuban people in their pursuit of liberty and condemn any violence or targeting of those exercising their rights.”
BIDEN CELEBRATES THE ‘CLARION CALL FOR FREEDOM’ VOICED BY ANTI-COMMUNIST PROTESTERS IN CUBA
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted Sunday, “After decades of suffering through a communist dictatorship, the Cuban people deserve liberty. I am proud to stand in solidarity with the people of Cuba who are calling out for freedom.”
Lawmakers of Cuban descent blasted the regime calling for an end to the dictatorship previously led by Fidel Castro from 1959 to 2008 and later by his brother Raul until April of this year. Miguel Diaz-Canel is now president of Cuba.
“For decades, Cuba’s dictatorship has used violence and repression to silence its people, rather than permit the free exercise of democracy and their basic social rights. This must end. The world’s eyes are on Cuba tonight and the dictatorship must understand we will not tolerate the use of brute force to silence the aspirations of the Cuban people,” Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said in a statement.
“As I’ve said over the years, no one wishes that the reality in Cuba was more different than the Cuban people and Cuban-Americans that have fled the island in search of freedom. Let us hear their voices. Listen to their cries of desperation. Support their demands by ensuring we do not perpetuate the regime’s decades of repression,” he added.
President Joe Biden made his first remarks about the Cuban protests on Monday. He wrote, “We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”
Biden added, “The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, took issue with the administration’s response. In a tweet, the Cuban American lawmaker noted that a sanction was lifted by the United States from the Venezuelan dictatorship on Monday.
“At the very moment the #MaduroRegime was abducting one prominent member of the opposition & surrounding the home of @jguaido trying to abduct him the Biden Administration was announcing it was removing a sanction on the regime in #Venezuela,” Rubio tweeted with an image of a Treasury Department letter dated July 12, 2021.
Fellow Cuban American Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a freshman GOP lawmaker, questioned why the president avoided using the word “communism” in his statement about Cuba.
“Why is President Biden carefully avoiding the word ‘communism’ in describing the Cuban regime? The United States needs to make it clear that the evils of communism have brought nothing but poverty, misery, and death. #SOSCuba,” Gimenez tweeted.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, slammed media coverage of the events in Cuba and noted, “I love how the NYT acknowledges that ‘freedom’ is an ‘anti-government slogan.’”
