Menendez: Cuba Responded to Biden’s ‘Unilateral Concessions’ by Increasing Repression, Including ‘Death Penalty for Free Speech’

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Jose Diaz-Balart Reports,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) criticized the Biden administration for lifting some restrictions on Cuba by saying that the day that the policy changes were announced, the Cuban regime put “sweeping, draconian consequences” for free speech into law and that the Biden administration’s move is “a unilateral concession that ultimately was responded to by having a penal code that includes the death penalty for free speech activities.”

Menendez said, “On the day that the administration announced these unilateral concessions to the regime, the regime put into law, as part of their penal code, sweeping, draconian consequences for people who exercise what we would call here in the United States free speech, including the death penalty under certain circumstances for what would be an act of free speech. So, instead of insisting that the regime move towards change, respect for human rights, peaceful protests, giving a voice to the Cuban people, and stopping the jailing of dissidents, what we have is a unilateral concession that ultimately was responded to by having a penal code that includes the death penalty for free speech activities.”

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