Populist party VOX has demanded the Spanish government condemn the Cuban regime as anti-government protests sweep through the Latin American country.
The VOX parliamentary group produced a motion urging the government to make a “public and resounding denunciation of the repression of peaceful demonstrations, the limitation of freedom of expression, and the violation of human rights in Cuba”.
VOX MP Iván Espinosa de los Monteros added that he wanted to see “the implementation of the necessary diplomatic steps to prevent the repression of the Cuban people and the violation of human rights by the government of the island”, newspaper El Mundo reports.
“From here, congress, we send a message of encouragement and support to all the Cuban people. They have us by their side. We denounce the wave of terror and blood. Twenty journalists have been arrested. We demand their immediate release and that of all Cubans who remain incarcerated as political prisoners,” Espinosa de los Monteros said.
Last year, VOX leader Santiago Abascal was one of many signatories, including Italian national-conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI) leader Giorgia Meloni, to the anti-communist “Madrid Charter” that highlighted Cuba’s role in the “Iberosphere”.
“Part of the region is hijacked by communist-inspired totalitarian regimes, supported by drug trafficking and third countries. All of them, under the umbrella of the Cuban regime and initiatives such as the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group, infiltrate the centres of power to impose their ideological agenda,” the charter states.
The centre-right People’s Party has also criticised the government for “pardoning” the actions of the Cuban regime by not speaking out against it or condemning the repression of protestors.
Pablo Casado, the leader of the People’s Party, stated that his party would raise the Cuba issue in the European Parliament and call for a pronouncement “so that the freedom of the peaceful demonstrators in Cuba is respected and the harassment of peaceful Venezuelan dissidents ceases”.
On Monday, the pro-democracy group Cuba Decide confirmed that 57 people, most of them noted critics of the Cuban communist regime, have either been arrested or have disappeared since the start of the protests on Sunday.
A day later, Cuba’s state-run telecommunications company ETECSA shut down access to social media platforms and messaging apps in order to quell protests.
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