“If you’re offended by us giving a platform to Cubans to speak about these issues, how about you stop doing them?”
That was U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz’s answer to Cuba’s communist government, which tried to block a U.S.-hosted event at the United Nations featuring Cubans who survived its prisons.
The event went ahead Monday at UN headquarters in New York. It was titled “Cuba Libre: The Oppression Havana Hides.” It came about a week before the UN General Assembly’s annual vote on a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
“This is the oppression that Havana wants to hide,” Waltz said, according to the Associated Press. He urged countries to look past “70 years of propaganda” and vote against the resolution.
The witnesses
The panel included José Daniel Ferrer, an opposition leader who spent more than 12 years in Cuban prisons and described torture during his imprisonment, according to CiberCuba. Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara spoke after five years behind bars and forced exile. Researcher María Werlau addressed conditions for Cuban doctors sent abroad, and economist Emilio Morales named GAESA, the military-run conglomerate, as the center of the regime’s financial power.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican of Cuban descent, demanded UN accountability and asked how Cuba keeps winning a seat on the Human Rights Council.
The event showed footage of what appeared to be Cubans being detained, the AP reported. Havana denies holding political prisoners. Activist groups have documented thousands.
Lights for prisons, not hospitals
Waltz zeroed in on the regime’s elite. “What I find truly outrageous is that the regime can’t provide enough energy for hospitals, schools, or people’s homes,” he said, while it keeps its prisons running, according to Cuba Headlines. He listed perks he said the ruling class enjoys, from guaranteed power for the Castro family compound to a private island.
His close was three words: “Enough is enough.”
Havana’s response
Days before, Cuba’s UN ambassador, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, tried to shut the event down. He called it a “politically motivated maneuver” and claimed it broke UN rules. On Monday, he gathered diplomats a few feet away to protest what he called a “charade,” the AP reported. Ferrer said Cuban diplomats confronted the activists and shouted “terrorists” at them.
Cuba’s foreign minister accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio of “pressuring and blackmailing” other governments.
The vote
The resolution has passed for 34 years. But support is slipping. It drew 187 votes in 2024 and 165 last year, when Argentina, Hungary and Ukraine voted no for the first time. A special session in July drew 136. The next vote is set for Oct. 27-28.
Cuba’s ambassador called the U.S. “an international delinquent” imposing “collective punishment” on Cubans. Critics blame U.S. pressure on fuel shipments for the island’s blackouts.
The bottom line
A government that jails artists and tortures dissidents wanted the UN to silence its victims. That tells you everything about who is afraid of the truth here.
For decades, the UN has let Havana blame America for the misery communism created. Waltz turned the microphone over to the people who lived it. The regime’s diplomats answered by staging a protest a few feet away.
If the free world votes for Havana’s resolution after hearing them, it isn’t standing up for the Cuban people. It is standing up for their jailers.
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