WASHINGTON: The United States announced its first sanctions on Friday against Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel for his role “in the Cuban regime’s brutality towards the Cuban people.”

It is the latest in a series of measures by US President Donald Trump’s administration to increase pressure on the Cuban government. The United States was restricting visas for the Cuban president and other high-ranking government officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an X post on the fourth anniversary of historic anti-government protests in Cuba.

Demonstrations rocked the island in July 2021 as thousands took to the streets to protest shortages of basic goods and worsening economic conditions. Hundreds were arrested, one person died and dozens were injured in the largest protests since Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution.

The State Department said it was sanctioning “key regime leaders… for their involvement in gross violations of human rights.” Officials sanctioned included Defence Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera and Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas.

The United States was also taking steps to sanction Cuban judicial and prison officials linked to the “unjust detention and torture of July 2021 protestors.” “While the Cuban people suffer shortages of food, water, medicine, and electricity, the regime lavishes money on its insiders,” Rubio said.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed the measures on X, saying the United States cannot “bend the will of its people or its leaders.”

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2025