Cuba denies resignation of a top security general over violent response to protests
In a rare move, the Cuban government denied Wednesday published reports that a top Interior Ministry general had resigned over the treatment of participants in islandwide anti-government protests that erupted Sunday.
The Spanish daily ABC reported that Brigadier General Jesús Manuel Burón Tabit, the second in command in the Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police and other security forces, had resigned over disagreements about the response to the protests. Burón, a member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, allegedly criticized the use of lethal force against the demonstrators, the paper said.
Alberto Gonzalez Casals, director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ International Press Center, said the ABC report was false.
“#FakeNews,” the center tweeted with a link to the ABC report. “The press should tell the facts with veracity and should not disinform.”
Several videos coming out of the island show police and special forces beating and arresting demonstrators. Some videos also show officers shooting at protesters. A man in Cardenas, in the province of Matanzas, was shot at his home by special forces known as “Avispas Negras” — black wasps — on Tuesday as they attempted to arrest him, his wife told el Nuevo Herald. Later in the evening a Cuban newscast showed the man being questioned by police, apparently in good health.
The government had confirmed Tuesday that at least one protester was dead.
Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel denied in a televised address there was repression against the demonstrators, who were portrayed in official media as delinquents and mercenaries. But the images coming out of Cuba tell otherwise.
One video shows how a man is hunted down at the rooftop of a building in Havana, and several officers, some in civilian clothes, start beating him. In another, a demonstrator is surrounded by policemen who start punching him in the face and head. Women and children have also been the target of police violence. In one video, several women yell at police officers trying to detain a teenage girl, shouting, “Leave her; she is just a child!”
While Cubans have kept up the protests in some towns and neighborhoods since Sunday, the heavy police presence and internet shutdown have stymied any larger demonstrations. But some activists said the wave of repression would only add to the frustrations caused by the lack of food and necessities and the lack of “leadership” fueling the protests.
“Without question, these protests have set a precedent: to break that barrier of fear that has immobilized the Cuban people for so long,” said Claudia Genlui, art curator and member of the San Isidro Movement, a group of activist artists that led an anti-government protest last November. “The repression will increase, but that will only increase the desire of the people to take to the streets.”
This story was originally published July 14, 2021 at 5:56 PM.