Cuba: On 11 July US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Washington was blacklisting Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Cuba’s defence minister, Álvaro López Miera, and interior minister, Lázaro Álvarez Casas, on the anniversary of the 11 July 2021 anti-government protests which rocked the island over health, economic, and political grievances. The unrest was met with a crackdown by the Cuban government which, according to the US State Department, “unjustly detain[ed] thousands, including over 700 who are still imprisoned and subjected to torture or abuse”. The State Department press release also noted that as well as blacklisting the three officials, it was imposing visa restrictions on “numerous Cuban judicial and prison officials responsible for, or complicit in, the unjust detention and torture of July 2021 protestors”. It also revealed that it was “updating the Cuba Restricted List and the Cuba Prohibited Accommodations List to include 11 regime-linked properties, including the new 42-story “Torre K” hotel, to prevent U.S. funds from reaching the island’s corrupt repressors”. The announcement comes as the US administration led by President Donald Trump is adopting an increasingly hard line towards Cuba. On 30 June Trump signed a memorandum which, among other things, bans direct or indirect financial transactions with entities controlled by the Cuban military, such as Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A. (Gaesa), and its affiliates; enforces the statutory ban on US tourism to Cuba; and reiterates support for the decades-old US economic embargo against Cuba.
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