Albeit belatedly, President Joe Biden has now offered support to the thousands of Cubans now protesting their government.
After White House silence and a tepid State Department condemnation this weekend of violence against protesters, Biden issued a clearer clarification on Monday.
In a White House statement, Biden observed that “We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime. The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected.”
Nationwide protests erupted this weekend amid despair over food shortages, the government’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic (which has shredded the island nation’s misplaced reputation for a world-leading healthcare system), and a continuing economic malaise. But as attested by their calls for freedom, those taking to the streets were also outraged by President Miguel Diaz-Canel’s ever-increasing oppression. Introducing Decree-Law 370 in 2020, the regime has further restricted online speech and creative activity.
Those Cubans demanding more freedom are showing great courage. The Communist regime’s mass-repression apparatus is potent in scale and highly skilled in action. And it bears few compunctions about using brutal force against its people. Security forces have been recorded beating protesters and even shooting some. Biden’s words are necessarily unequivocal. These protests, after all, are the largest in nearly 30 years. They may yet grow.
True, Biden’s words do not necessarily indicate that action will follow. Action-orientated moral leadership is something Republicans must now push for. But at least as of Monday, there is a striking difference between Biden’s tack and that taken by the administration in which Biden previously served as vice president. Desperate to reestablish normal relations with Cuba, former President Barack Obama was happy to relegate human rights concerns. Obama’s deference to the Castro regime was perhaps best epitomized by the absurd, fawning decision to send his foreign policy guru, Ben Rhodes, to Fidel Castro’s funeral. What might those now on the streets have thought about such deference to a brutal dictator?
There’s no question that Cubans are living under a regime defined by deepening moral and intellectual rot. Evincing the latter malaise, Diaz-Canel claimed on Monday that the United States was employing the activist and former pornographic actress Mia Khalifa as a protest leader against his regime. It might seem silly, but his rhetoric reflects the government’s utter disinterest in listening to its suffering people. This is not a regime that appears at all capable of the reform Obama promised his detente would deliver.
We should lament the Biden administration’s failure to condemn the violence more quickly. But what we’ve seen on Monday represents a step in the right direction. The president should now work with Congress to impose sanctions on human rights abusers. He should also pressure the European Union and Latin American nations to take similar steps.
