U.S. Imposes New Sanctions on Cuba, as Biden Vows ‘This Is Just the Beginning’

July 23, 2021 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced the imposition of sanctions on Cuban Defense Minister Gen. Alvaro López Miera, and on the Interior Ministry’s Special National Brigade, charging them with responsibility for the repression, illegal detention and alleged “disappearance” of “peaceful protesters” who took to the streets on July 11. Amid charges that the Cuban government is illegally jailing and beating minors, the new sanctions will freeze whatever assets or bank accounts General López Miera might have in the United States, and prohibits him from entering the country, under the terms of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.

Separately, President Joe Biden issued one of his many sanctimonious statements, vowing that yesterday’s sanctions “are only the beginning.... The United States will continue to sanction the individuals responsible for oppressing the Cuban people.” As indicated in a separate White House Fact Sheet, the administration is also working with the UN and “our international partners ... to collectively condemn” the Cuban government’s repression of those who “demand freedom.” Among those partners are the fanatical leaders of the Cuban exile community in Miami, described as “the best ambassadors for freedom and prosperity in Cuba.”

Responding to the sanctions announcement at a Havana press conference yesterday, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez denounced Biden’s interventionist policies, and specifically denied there were minors who had been arrested or tortured, and countered claims there had been “a “social explosion,” or “brutal repression.” The depiction of Cuba by the North American media bears no resemblance to reality, he charged, according to Granma. Given the harsh oppression with violence and racism by Washington against its own most vulnerable citizens, said Rodríguez, “the U.S. has no moral authority” to criticize Cuba or anyone else. Usefully, the Cuban government and media continue to detail how the subversive agencies of the Project Democracy apparatus—the State Department’s USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, and its related National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute; Freedom House, World Movement for Democracy, and others—have deployed in Cuba for decades with enormous amounts of money to promote color revolution/regime change—“democracy”— and were extremely active in the period leading up to the July 11 protests.