Trudeau Treads Lightly After Cuba Cracks Down on Street Protests
(Bloomberg) -- Justin Trudeau said Canada would press for greater liberty in Cuba, but stopped short of condemning a wave of arrests and an apparent attempt to shut down social media after unprecedented street protests roiled the communist nation.
The Canadian prime minister, whose father was a friend of Fidel Castro’s, spoke out a day after U.S. President Joe Biden warned the Cuban government against a heavy-handed response to the demonstrators.
“Canada has always stood in friendship with the Cuban people,” Trudeau said Tuesday when asked about Havana’s moves to quell dissent. “We have always called for greater freedoms and more defense of human rights in Cuba. We will continue to be there to support Cubans in their desire for greater peace, greater stability and greater voice in how things are going.”
Canada never broke relations with the Caribbean nation after the revolution that swept Castro to power in 1959 and almost brought the U.S. and Russia to nuclear war in the early 1960s. Before the pandemic shut down travel, Canadian travelers were the biggest source of foreign tourism to the island.
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