Havana (AFP)
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Sunday that the demonstration in Havana by young artists of the San Isidro Movement demanding the right to free speech was "the last attempt" by the administration of Donald Trump "to overthrow the Cuban revolution ".
"You know they tried to trick us, they set up a media circus," Diaz-Canel told hundreds of young people who took part in a "defense of the revolution" event in a park in the capital.
The protest was "the last attempt that the Trumpists and the anti-Cuban Mafia (of Miami) could lead," as part of an "unconventional war strategy to try to overthrow the revolution," the president said.
"They had foreseen (...) that before the end of the year, the Cuban revolution was to fall, Nicaragua was to fall and Venezuela was to fall, and they will have to be satisfied with one wish", failing that 'have succeeded, he added.
A group of 14 people, members of or close to the San Isidro Movement, barricaded itself for ten days in a house in Havana to demand the release of one of their own, rapper Denis Solis, sentenced to eight months in prison for " contempt "of authority.
They had been expelled Thursday evening by the police, who had pretended to a danger of the spread of Covid-19, because a person present, who had just arrived from Mexico via the United States, would have violated the health protocols.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry on Saturday summoned the American charge d'affaires in Cuba, Timothy Zuñiga-Brown, denouncing "flagrant and provocative interference" with the San Isidro Movement.
"We do not admit any intrusion on the part of the North. Our problems are debated among us, and we decide with our own sovereignty. And here there is a space for dialogue on all matters relating to socialism," said the Cuban President, who wore a T-shirt in the colors of the Cuban flag.
On Friday evening, some 200 artists gathered for hours in front of the Ministry of Culture to call for more freedom of expression, and a delegation of them ended up being received by the vice-minister, Fernando Rojas.
© 2020 AFP