Cuba is cutting food and medicine habits after protests by Reuters

By Sarah Marsh and Nelson Acosta

HAVANA (Reuters) -Cuba reported on Wednesday that it was removing restrictions on the amount of food and medicine that temporary travelers could bring to the country in a small concession granted to protesters who took to the streets last weekend.

Thousands of citizens rallied in the face of a shortage of basic goods, restrictions on civil liberties and the government’s rise in COVID-19 infections on Sunday in a major unrest in the country managed by communists for decades.

The government blamed unrest on U.S.-funded “counterrevolutionaries” for exploiting the difficulties caused by decades of U.S. trade embargoes that Washington squeezed in the midst of the pandemic and pushed the Cuban economy to the brink.

Several countries and the United Nations have called on the government to respect the right of citizens to express themselves. Others like Mexico https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-foreign-minister-says-looking-into-humanitarian-aid-cuba-2021-07-13 say the best way to help the Cuban people is in the United States it would alleviate penalties.

In Cuba, the number of renowned artists nL8N2OQ0DK is growing from the Los Van Van salsa band to the jazz pianist Chucho Valdes. Authorities have criticized the way they handled the unrest, urging protesters to listen instead of fighting them.

NL1N2OP1US Internet disruptions were interrupted by activists who said they were designed to alleviate any other unrest on Wednesday even though access to social media and messaging services was limited.

Officials have accused a social media campaign of demanding humanitarian aid to feed the protests under the hashtag #SOSCuba, saying it was launched by US-backed mercenaries in an attempt to destabilize the communist-led country.

Compared to the US-backed effort to send relief to Venezuela in 2019 https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-aid-effort-venezuela-was-not-aligned-with-humanitarian-principles -audit-findings-2021- 04-30 ended with a violent stop on the Colombian border.

However, one of the demands of the campaign was to remove the customs restrictions on food, medicine and hygiene products that are lacking in the country since the fall of the former Soviet ally of the government in the worst economic crisis.

And Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on Wednesday that the government will do exactly that from next Monday, lifting the restrictions until the end of the year.

“It was a request made by many travelers and it was necessary to make that decision,” he said at a roundtable discussion on state television, along with President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

It was not immediately clear how much of a difference the move would make given that there are currently few flights to the Caribbean’s national island, which has experienced the worst outbreak of its coronavirus since the pandemic began.

Government critic Yoani Sanchez, who runs the 14ymedio news website, immediately tweeted that such an age would not be enough to appease those who protested on Sunday.

“We don’t want little, we want freedom and we want it now,” he wrote. “The street has spoken: we are not afraid.”

Cubans say disruptions to the mobile internet and reduced access to social media and messaging platforms since Sunday.

“It’s been a bunch of days that no one has been able to connect,” said Havana resident Andrea Lopez. “My husband is in Mexico and I couldn’t talk to him.”

More than 200 people were arrested during or after the protests, according to exiled Cubalex groups, and only a few have been released so far.

Diaz-Canel said there were three types of protesters; counter-revolutionaries, criminals and those with legitimate frustrations. State television showed images of the crowd attacking a store and another empty police car.

Interior Ministry officials later told a television program that some of the detainees face long-term prison sentences for incitement to violence, contempt, theft and damage to public property.