\n<\/p>\n
State Department head Rubio said he had sanctioned several senior officials and their \u2018cronies\u2019 for their \u2018brutality toward the Cuban people\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n The US State Department has imposed sanctions on senior Cuban officials, including President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced as he marked the fourth anniversary of a brutal crackdown on historic antigovernment protests.<\/p>\n In a post on X, Rubio said the State Department would be \u201crestricting visas for Cuban regime figureheads\u201d, including President Diaz-Canel,\u00a0Defence Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera, Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas, and their \u201ccronies\u201d for their \u201crole in the Cuban regime\u2019s brutality toward the Cuban people\u201d.<\/p>\n Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, also announced that the State Department has added the Torre K hotel to its restricted list of entities in order to \u201cprevent US dollars from funding the Cuban regime\u2019s repression\u201d.<\/p>\n The Cuban government has promoted the luxury high-rise Torre K in central Havana as a symbol of modernisation. But the government has faced criticism for its large investment in luxury hotels amid a severe economic crisis in the nominally socialist one-party state.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the Cuban people suffer shortages of food, water, medicine, and electricity, the regime lavishes money on its insiders,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n Ten other \u201cregime-linked properties\u201d were also added to the State Department\u2019s List of Prohibited Accommodations, it said in a statement.<\/p>\n The statement said the sanctions were being enacted in \u201csolidarity with the Cuban people and the island\u2019s political prisoners\u201d, citing the Cuban government\u2019s brutal crackdown on the July 2021 demonstrations \u2013 the largest since the Cuban revolution in the 1950s.<\/p>\n The police crackdown resulted in one death and dozens of wounded protesters.<\/p>\n \u201cFour years ago, thousands of Cubans peacefully took to the streets to demand a future free from tyranny. The Cuban regime responded with violence and repression, unjustly detaining thousands, including over 700 who are still imprisoned and subjected to torture or abuse,\u201d the State Department said.<\/p>\n Rubio also accused Cuba of torturing pro-democracy activist Jose Daniel Ferrer, whose bail was revoked as he was taken into custody alongside fellow dissident Felix Navarro in April.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States demands immediate proof of life and the release of all political prisoners,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed the latest measures as part of a \u201cruthless economic war\u201d being waged by the administration of US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cThe USA is capable of imposing migratory sanctions against revolutionary leaders and maintaining a prolonged and ruthless economic war against Cuba, but it lacks the ability to break the will of these people or their leaders,\u201d he said on X.<\/p>\n In January, then-US President Joe Biden had removed Cuba from the blacklist of countries sponsoring terrorism.<\/p>\n But Trump returned the country to the blacklist immediately after returning to the White House as he resumed his \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign against Cuba that typified his foreign policy during his first term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" State Department head Rubio said he had sanctioned several senior officials and their \u2018cronies\u2019 for their \u2018brutality toward the Cuban people\u2019. The US State Department has imposed sanctions on senior Cuban officials, including President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced as he marked the fourth anniversary of a brutal crackdown on historic antigovernment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[877,964,2073,3606,150,1059,3605,3604,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-10582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-cuban","9":"tag-donald","10":"tag-hotels","11":"tag-luxury","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-president","14":"tag-regimecontrolled","15":"tag-sanctions","16":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}