By: Vitalio Angula and Aldo Fuentes

The Twitter #HashTag #SOSCuba which began on 5 July 2021 culminated in a series of sporadic protests on the island nation state of Cuba.

The protests began on the 11 July but have since subsided due to efforts by Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel to restore order and bring about calm.

The island nation of 11 million inhabitants has been caught up in a storm of rising Corona Virus infections, power cuts due to a lack of spare parts and crippling oil shortages that have infuriated Cuban citizens.

#SOSCuba, emanated from Spain with Twitter diagnostics placing it amongst the quickest tweets to go viral in such a short space of time.

When following the timeline of events from the first tweet to the resulting protests, a pattern begins to emerge, one that bears striking similarities to the Arab Spring, the Venezuelan protests and the military intervention in Syria by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and its main benefactor the United States of America (USA).

“Fifth Generation Warfare is conducted primarily through non-kinetic (virtual) military action such as social-engineering, misinformation, cyber-attacks, along with emerging technologies”.

MISINFORMATION!

Misinformation has been used to further the U.S. agenda of regime change in Cuba and this is clearly evident by how news media outlets choose to cover the events of the past few days.

Bias reporting by international media organisations has added to the distortion of events in Cuba.

Reporting that does not highlight the country’s challenges brought about by an increase in measures of the blockade but rather spins the narrative to depict the protests as a result of dissatisfaction by the country’s citizens with the elected government.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) chooses emotionally charged’ words to describe the recent events in Cuba as “protestors demanding freedom from a repressive Communist regime”.

Whereas their approach to reporting on South Africa maintains a decorum of balance towards protests and law enforcement’s need to restore order.

Daniel Abbot describes Fifth-Generation Warfare as a war of information and perception brought about by an increase in political, economic and technological warfare.

Nowhere is this more evident than today when non-state entities through Twitter are easily able to instigate war on an equal footing with nation-states.

Francis Suarez, the Mayor of Miami, who is born to Cuban parents Former Mayor of Miami Xavier Suarez and Rita Suarez recently called on U.S. President Joe Biden to launch air strikes against Cuba.

On the 13 July, in an interview with Fox News the Mayor said, “What should be contemplated is a coalition of military action in Cuba” similar to U.S. interventions in Panama and Yugoslavia under presidents from both parties (Republican and Democrats).

One can clearly see the motive behind the #SOSCuba Hashtag starting to bear the fruits of its intended consequences, which is the use of technology to effect regime change by toppling democratically elected governments and installing puppet rulers to serve U.S. interests.

On the Progressive Left of U.S. domestic politics is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, a member of The Squad, who on 16 July called out President Biden for defending the absurdly cruel embargo on Cuba.

She described the embargo as “absolutely cruel and, like too many other U.S. policies targeting Latin America”.

“The cruelty is the point”, Cortez maintained.

“I outright reject the Biden administration’s defence of the embargo” she added whilst stating that ‘Washington’s policy toward the island nation for six decades is the main contributing factor to the suffering of the Cubans, which inadvertently led to the protests.

The right to protest is guaranteed by the Cuban Constitution; however these peaceful protests quickly degenerated into riots, vandalism and attacks on public institutions as well as law enforcement agencies.

These turn of events needed to be contained before they got out of hand.

The manipulation of information, although sometimes laughable is used to depict the government of Cuba in a bad light.

Even though the progress made by the state in these trying times cannot be over-stated, there are still counter – revolutionaries who have tried to undermine the contribution Cuba makes to the well-being of its citizens and the betterment of the world.

Cuba is the only Latin-American country to produce a vaccine against the Novel-Corona virus which has caused major economic hardship in most countries in the world.

Despite the sanctions on Cuba by the USA, which are set to enter their sixty-third year, Cuba continues to champion human rights and the need for access to healthcare for all its citizens of the world.

But this is not the story that western media chooses to share with the world.

Gerardo Hernandez, a member of the famous Cuban Five was recently depicted in western media as being in support of the anti-government protests when in fact he is part of a majority of demonstrators who went out in full numbers in defence of the revolution and in support of the Cuban government.

As President of the Committee’s of Defence of the Revolution, Hernandez and many others led marches to defend the revolutionary gains of the Cuban people and to call on the Cuban people to solve their problems with patriotic unity amongst Cubans internally, outside of external political interference, to the advancement of areas which have been affected by the blockade, the pandemic and the internal challenges of the nation.

Vitalio Angula is a sociopolitical commentator and independent columnist

Aldo Fuentes is the Second Secretary and Deputy Head of Mission of The Cuba Embassy in Namibia