Despite its horrific human rights violations, the European Union continues to do business with Cuba’s communist dictatorship and provide financial aid to the corrupt and brutally oppressive regime. The EU has been a lifeline to the Cuban Communist Party, which has used the largess of the EU to maintain its grip on power and provide support to sinister leaders, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
A group of human rights activists is calling on the EU to cut its ties to the Castro dictatorship, pointing out that its support allows the Cuban regime to continue providing support and political cover for Russia in its war against Ukraine.
The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC) called this week for the European Union to cease its financial support of Cuba’s communist regime, denouncing the regime’s support of Russia in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Since 1988, the European Union has maintained direct relations with Cuba that have resulted in the communist regime receiving hundreds of millions of euros in financing, ARC leaders noted at an event in Lithuania.
The EU’s multi-million-euro financial assistance deal with Cuba appears to have had no effect on the improvement of living conditions of Cuba’s citizens, who are forced to live in conditions of extreme poverty and other inhumane conditions as a direct result of more than six decades of communist mismanagement.
Cubans are currently experiencing the collapse of their population and the worst migrant crisis in its history. The communist regime’s politics have forced Cubans to endure severe shortages of food, medicine, and other basic supplies in addition to constant power blackouts of up to 12 hours at a time, severe water shortages, rampant inflation, and a derelict healthcare infrastructure.
“We are in Spain raising our voices for a free Cuba and to demand the end of the European Community’s subsidy to the Castro dictatorship,” ARC secretary-general Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat told the independent outlet ADN Cuba on Tuesday.
Gutiérrez Boronat; Julián Obiglio, the president of the Union of Latin American Parties; former Cuban political prisoner Jorge Luis García “Antúnez,” and other activists held an encounter on Monday with Spanish senators in which they expressed their calls to end the European financing of the Castro regime. The Cuban activists also urged effective support from Western democracies to Cuban opposition and resistance.
“It is inconceivable that with more than a thousand political prisoners in Cuba, among them my brother Loreto Hernandez, that Europe continues to finance the dictatorship and repression on the island,” Garcia said.
The EU has always spoken out of both sides of its mouth, decrying human rights violations while cozying up with brutal dictatorships. It’s time the EU end its support and aid to Cuba’s communist dictatorship.
Nice try, but definitely no cigar. And before we trash the EU, deserved though it is, there’s the little matter of Spain, which has always posed as the greatest European authority on Cuba yet has been every bit as bad as the EU in general–or rather MUCH worse, considering it;s MUCH higher obligation to treat Cuba decently.