14ymedio, Madrid, 3 October 2023 — The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, has compared the anti-government demonstrations of 11 July 2021 [’11J’] in Cuba with the assault on the Washington Capitol on January 6 of that same year. In an interview with WLRN radio station, located in South Florida, the senior official also clarified that no change is expected that will allow Cuban-Americans to open companies on the Island, as the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, allegedly said last week.
Tim Padgett, editor of the radio chain, addressed the situation of bilateral relations with Fernández de Cossío, who argued – as in previous interviews – that progress has been made in some technical areas, especially those related to migration, but also in education, culture or legislation, including anti-terrorism. However, he again reproached the Biden Administration for maintaining a line that continues the policy of his predecessor, specifically regarding the embargo.
Thousands of people participated in the demonstration in Cuba more than two years ago. Thousands of people… and a few hundred were prosecuted
The interviewer reminded the official that the White House has put the brakes on an eventual reissue of the thaw due to the repression unleashed after the 11J protests, when there were thousands of arrests. “Thousands of people in the demonstration in Cuba more than two years ago. Thousands of people… and a few hundred were prosecuted,” argued Fernández de Cossío, who attributes the arrests and subsequent convictions to vandalism and not to the demands that were made that day on the marches.
“That in Cuba is a crime, as I suspect it is in the United States,” he said, which Padgett refuted with the figures of international human rights groups, according to which between 500 and 700 people were tried simply for protesting. “For the events of January 6, 2021, in the United States, people who were not even present in the area have been imprisoned, just because they were accused of inciting people to go to the Capitol,” said Fernández de Cossío in an unexpected and veiled defense, voluntary or not, of the leader of the far-right organization Proud Boys, the Cuban-American Enrique Tarrio.
The U.S. Justice Department sentenced Tarrio to 22 years in prison for encouraging the siege of the House of Represen