Secretary of State Marco Rubio linked the new restrictions to the 2021 unrest in Havana
The US has placed visa restrictions on Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, accusing Havana of human rights violations.
Cuban Defense Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera and Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas have also been blacklisted.
In a statement on X on Friday, Rubio accused the Communist authorities in Cuba of corruption and mentioned the 2021 anti-government protests and clashes in Havana.
“Four years since the Cuban regime’s brutal crackdown on protestors, the State Department is restricting visas for Cuban regime figureheads … and their cronies for their role in the Cuban regime’s brutality toward the Cuban people,” he wrote.
“The United States demands immediate proof of life and the release of all political prisoners,” Rubio added.
Cuban officials have claimed that the US incited the 2021 unrest by exploiting economic hardships in order to topple the government.
In May, the US imposed sanctions on three Cuban judges and a prosecutor for their role in the imprisonment of protester and activist Luis Robles. In 2025, Robles was released after serving nearly five years behind bars.
The island nation has remained under a US trade blockade since the 1960s. US President Donald Trump has reversed the Obama-era attempts at normalizing relations and earlier this year reinstated Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry has vowed to resist the US “imperialist and interventionist” policies. “We are free, sovereign and independent, and we are going to continue building our revolution, despite the tightening of the blockade,” Diaz-Canel said last year.
Russia and China have repeatedly condemned US sanctions against Havana. In an op-ed published in Cuba’s state-run newspaper Granma in May, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for the lifting of the “illegal” economic blockade.
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