In Miami, members of Congress mark anniversary of July 11 protests, call for sanctions on Cuba

Citing Cuba’s support of Russia and reports about Chinese espionage activities based near Havana, members of Congress called for tougher sanctions against the island’s government on Monday, during a bipartisan roundtable held in Miami to mark the second anniversary of the July 11 anti-government protests.

The anniversary of the island-wide uprising in 2021 comes during a significant deterioration in the human-rights situation in Cuba, with hundreds of people still in prison for joining the demonstrations and a renewed alliance between the Cuban regime and the authoritarian regimes in Russia and China, the roundtable participants stressed.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), who hosted the event at the Assault Brigade 2506 Museum in Hialeah Gardens, said supporting the Cuban people’s aspirations for freedom is not only “a moral imperative but a national security requirement.”

Recent intelligence that China plans to expand its espionage capabilities on the island and build a military training facility “poses a clear and present danger to U.S national security… and cannot be tolerated,” McCaul said.

Florida Republicans Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar and Mike Waltz and Florida Democrats Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Jared Moskowitz echoed those concerns during the event.

“To allow the encroachment of China and Russia and Iran, as close as that as they are to our shores, is absolutely unacceptable,” said Wasserman Schultz. “We cannot allow the continuing repression; we have to continue to apply sanctions. We have to make sure that the regime understands that the only pathway to relief is to join the family and community of democratic nations and allow free and fair elections for their people.”

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McCaul said he and his colleagues in Congress would not stop advocating for the release of the estimated 800 demonstrators still imprisoned, among them some of the main figures in the opposition movement on the island.

Cuban opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, who was arrested two years ago while trying to join the July 11 street protests, is in solitary confinement at high-security prison near Santiago de Cuba. The treatment is likely to leave long-lasting physical and mental scars, his brother, the former political prisoner Luis Enrique Ferrer, told the Miami Herald.

“In the case of José Daniel, it is a unique isolation because not even the guards can enter that corridor where his cell is located,” his brother said. “They only enter accompanied by a prison head when they are going to bring food or see him for something else. He hasn’t been around any prisoner or had nobody to talk to.”

Ferrer’s wife, Dr. Nelva Ismarays Ortega, was not able to see him for three months until prison authorities granted her a five-minute visit on June 22, after activists launched a social media campaign demanding proof he was alive.

What she saw shocked her.

“They are killing my husband,” she said in an audio message shared with the Herald. “We saw him in his underwear, walking with difficulty because of severe pain in his extremities. He was extremely thin and had toothaches and vision loss. His body is full of skin lesions to the extent that he did not want to hug our son Daniel Jose so as not to infect him.”

Friends and relatives are also worried about the health of visual artist Luis Manuel Alcántara and Grammy-award winner rapper Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo, who spear-headed the dissident artistic group Movimiento San Isidro and had also been imprisoned for two years.

Monday marked the fourth day of a hunger strike Alcántara launched in prison to demand his release, the rapper Eliecer Márquez, known as El Funky said during the roundtable. He, Castillo and Alcántara all participated in the recording of a video of the protest anthem Patria y Vida, that won the Latin Grammy award for best song of the year in 2021.

“Luis Manuel had already told us that if July 11 comes and they have not released him, he was going to go on strike again because he can’t stand being there anymore, that he would rather die than be in prison,” Anamely Ramos, another prominent member of the San Isidro Movement living in Miami, told the Herald.

Diplomatic efforts by the United States, European Union officials and the Vatican seeking the release of the imprisoned protesters have clashed with the Cuban government’s insistence to set some of the political prisoners free only if they go into exile abroad, several sources have told the Herald. And the Cuban government seems to be treating the prisoners as bargaining chips to get concessions from the United States, the sources added.

Vivianny Peña, Castillo’s wife, told the Herald from Havana that his family has not heard from Cuban authorities about his release. However, she said he would be willing to go abroad for medical treatment for an undiagnosed medical condition.

Ramos, whom Cuban authorities have banned from entering the country, has said she is skeptical about the potential release of the Cuban political prisoners because the Cuban government is “arrogant,” and their liberation would mean a “triumph” for Cuba’s independent civil society.

“The problem is not only that they are not releasing people and that they are not advancing in the negotiations, it is that they continue imprisoning people,” she said.

Madrid-based organization Prisoners Defenders added 16 new names in June to their list of political prisoners in Cuba, which now includes 1,047 people.

During the Monday roundtable, activists and members of Congress said the U.S. should continue pressing for the unconditional release of the prisoners and other conditions stated in the 1996 Cuba Libertad Act, also known as the Helms-Burton Act, before considering easing sanctions on the Cuban government.

Activist Rosa María Payá called on the Biden administration to impose targeted sanctions on individuals involved in human rights violations in Cuba. Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, who coordinates a coalition of exile organizations known as the Assembly of Resistance, said the United States should do more to press its European partners, especially Spain, to stop “acting as the regime’s bodyguard.”

“It is time that the Cuban regime receives the message that its actions will not be met with impunity,” said Payá, whose father, the opposition leader Oswaldo Payá, was killed by Cuban state security agents, according to an investigation by the Organization of American States’ human rights commission.

Díaz-Balart, who chairs a House subcommittee that decides on the U.S. foreign policy budget, said there is bipartisan support to fund technologies that would expand internet access in Cuba — which was deemed essential for the demonstrators to connect with each other — and cutting U.S. aid to countries hiring Cuban doctors through the government medical missions that have been accused of human trafficking.

He also said the subcommittee included language in the State Department’s foreign operations bill to encourage European partners, “who continuously ask – and I am one who is supportive –funding for Ukraine” to have a more “consistent position” regarding Cuba, “telling them that you can’t ask the U.S. to help in the Ukraine while at the same time, you’re out there supporting the allies of Russia in this hemisphere.”

Rep. Waltz, a former Green Beret, made a similar comment during a press conference after the roundtable.

“I say this to our allies: You cannot say ‘we care about freedom in Ukraine, but then we’re going to ignore freedom right here in Cuba.’ You can’t say that we should open up sanctions for the Maduro regime, knowing that money is going to go right into the hands of Castro,” Waltz said.

“We are here,” he added, “because we want to send a clear message to the regime. We know you’re watching. We have not forgotten; we will never forget.”