U.S. Announces Visa Restrictions for 28 Cuban Officials

The United States (U.S.) announced today visa restrictions for 28 Cuban officials as part of its policy of sanctions against the island, coupled with the tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade.

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed on Saturday that in accordance with Presidential Proclamation 5377, a total of 28 Cuban government employees and members of the Cuban Communist Party are banned from entering U.S. territory.

In his official communiqué, the head of Washington's diplomacy specified that this measure is aimed at those who, in his opinion, allowed or facilitated violent and unjust arrests, false trials and prison sentences for those involved in the riots that took place in July of last year.

With such penalties and financial coercive measures, the US government intends to "support greater freedom and economic opportunities for the Cuban people", said Blinken, who did not mention the blockade as one of the causes of the economic situation of the Caribbean country.

In January and June of this year, as well as in November 2021, the State Department adopted similar measures against officials of the Ministry of the Interior and the Revolutionary Armed Forces to whom it also applied visa restrictions as a result of what happened on July 11, 2021.

On that day, riots occurred in several points of Cuba that attempted against the constitutional order and the stability of the State; there were crimes of public disorder, instigation to commit crimes and also acts of extreme violence against property, persons and authorities.

According to Havana, these actions were encouraged from the outside through the application of strategies of the so-called non-conventional warfare and as a result of the reinforcement of the coercive measures of the United States against the island in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last month, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez described the visa restrictions as an act of aggression, since they are "individual sanctions based on mendacious and absolutely unfounded accusations" and assured that "they do not bring us down, they only provoke our most energetic rejection".