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Cuba's President Miguel Díaz-Canel at a rally with supporters on Sunday
Photo: Yander Zamora / EPA
Thousands of people have been taking to the streets in Cuba for days - they are demonstrating against decades of mismanagement and state oppression. The government countered with severity: According to independent journalists, thousands of people were arrested within a few days. Protests were brutally suppressed by the police and at least one person was killed in the course of the demonstrations, according to state media.
Now the government is apparently trying to master the situation with concessions.
In the future, travelers will be allowed to import food, medicines and hygiene articles duty-free, as Prime Minister Manuel Marrero announced in a TV address on Wednesday.
The previously applicable quantity restrictions are therefore also no longer applicable.
The new rules will come into force on Monday and will initially apply until the end of the year.
The government is following a demand of the protest movement.
Most recently, a group of artists and intellectuals issued an open letter calling on the government to implement the measure.
So far, travelers have been allowed to import up to ten kilograms of medicine duty-free into Cuba.
They were also allowed to take a limited amount of food and hygiene products with them, but customs duties were due for this.
Marrero praises more stable energy supply
Prime Minister Marrero also promised that electricity generation should be improved and the production of medicines expanded.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel, at the TV address at the side of Marrero, also announced a "critical analysis" of the country's problems.
The government must learn its lessons from the "unrest".
Díaz-Canel also complained that the "complex situation" was being exploited by those "who did not want the Cuban revolution to develop".
Thousands of people took to the streets in socialist-ruled Cuba on Sunday.
The demonstrators expressed their displeasure with the worst economic crisis in 30 years and the associated electricity and food shortages.
Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, there has also been a critical drug shortage in Cuba.
The government, meanwhile, is sticking to its account, the US was behind the protests. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez accused the US government of having provoked the demonstrations "with its policy of sanctions and a campaign on the Internet". Relations between Cuba and the US have hit a new low since the tenure of former US President Donald Trump. Trump had tightened the embargo against Cuba that had existed since 1962.
The Internet blockade imposed on Sunday has since been lifted.
The people in the Caribbean country had access to the network again on Wednesday, as reported by reporters from the AFP news agency.
Access to Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp was still blocked.
Cubans can access independent news offers via networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
The online services also played an important role in organizing the nationwide protests.
fek / AFP