New York Times Blasted After Equating Cubans Yelling for ‘Freedom’ as an “Anti-Government Slogan”

Fox News has the latest example of the New York Times accidentally showing their vitriol for freedom:

The New York Times faced backlash on Sunday for its framing of recent spontaneous protests occurring in Cuba against the communist government.

"Shouting ‘Freedom’ and other anti-government slogans, hundreds of Cubans took to the streets in cities around the country on Sunday to protest food and medicine shortages, in a remarkable eruption of discontent not seen in nearly 30 years," the New York Times tweeted.

Thousands of protestors gathered in Havana and towns across the country to protest various government shortcomings including food shortages, medicine shortages, rising prices, and pandemic restrictions. Although many protestors attempted to film the march, Cuban authorities eventually shut down internet service within the area.

Some on Twitter users called out the New York Times tweet for equating "freedom" as an "anti-government slogan."

Communist Cuba erupted in its largest-scale demonstrations in decades on Sunday as thousands of people chanting “freedom” and “yes, we can” took to the streets from Havana to Santiago de Cuba in a major new challenge to an authoritarian government struggling to cope with increasingly severe blackouts, food shortages and a spiking coronavirus outbreak.

The protests, from Havana’s famous Malecon to small towns and the island nation’s eastern cities, spoke to the power of social media, as well as discontent that has bubbled to the surface in the worsening pandemic, during which Cuba has already witnessed growing political protests led by artists and musicians. They appear to have started in the city of San Antonio de los Baños and spread rapidly as demonstrators shared protests on Facebook Live.

The demonstrations were so large that President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who succeeded Raúl Castro this year as first secretary of the Communist Party, called on Cuba’s “revolutionary” citizens to take to the streets.

President Biden called on the “Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves.”

“We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” he said in a statement Monday. “The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected.”

Cubans are using social media to air their grievances — and the government is responding, sometimes

On Monday morning, Diaz-Canel denounced the protesters as “vulgar criminals” who he claimed had attacked police and looted stores. But his tone was less bombastic than the day before.

At a news conference, he decried “those who seek to discredit the revolution and fracture the unity of our country,” and presented ministers who offered technical updates on citizens’ bread-and-butter concerns. Officials vowed to improve the response to the country’s worsening covid outbreak by turning schools and hotels into isolation centers and emergency hospitals. They said the energy problems that have caused worsening blackouts were being worked out.

Witnesses said Cuban security personnel deployed tear gas and other forms of force Sunday to disperse crowds and used vehicles to detain dozens of people. There were reports of multiple people wounded as security forces and pro-government counterdemonstrators clashed with protesters.

“I have never seen such a protest in my life,” Noel Alonso Ginoris, 26, a writer and member of Havana’s San Isidro artists movement that has sought to challenge government authority, said by phone.

He joined the protests in Havana about 1 p.m. Sunday after seeing videos of demonstrations across the island. In central Havana, he said he saw a clash between protesters and about 50 pro-government demonstrators who were being guarded by police.

“That’s when things got tense and violent,” he said.

The two groups, he said, started confronting each other until the police intervened.

“Everyone started running; it was like a movie scene,” he said. “I saw one man very close to me, an older man in a blue pullover. They threw him to the ground, tied his hands and arrested him because he shouted ‘Freedom.’ ”

On social media, images appeared of Cuban citizens confronting officials in the authoritarian state, standing on what appeared to be overturned police cars and talking into cameras, bloodied and defiant after melees with government loyalists and police.

The Associated Press reported that a pro-government group assaulted an AP cameraman, disabling his camera, while an AP photographer was injured by the police.