Florida Senate - 2022                             (NP)    SR 902
       
       
        
       By Senator Taddeo
       
       
       
       
       
       40-01050-22                                            2022902__
    1                          Senate Resolution                        
    2         A resolution expressing solidarity with the Cuban
    3         people as they peacefully demonstrate for fundamental
    4         freedoms and condemning the Cuban government’s brutal
    5         repression of demonstrators and members of the foreign
    6         press.
    7  
    8         WHEREAS, on July 11, 2021, for the first time since the
    9  rise of the repressive, Stalinist-style communist dictatorship
   10  of Fidel Castro in the 1960s, the Cuban people began massive
   11  grassroots demonstrations demanding fundamental rights and
   12  freedoms, and
   13         WHEREAS, Cuban president and Communist Party Secretary
   14  Miguel Díaz-Canel responded by calling for civilian-on-civilian
   15  violence and directing police to violently attack protesters and
   16  duly credentialed foreign press photographers and camera
   17  operators who were documenting the protests, and
   18         WHEREAS, the regime cut off Internet access to impede the
   19  truth about the crackdown from reaching the outside world,
   20  officially characterizing the protestors as criminals and paid
   21  agents of foreign governments and unleashing special military
   22  units against peaceful civilians, and
   23         WHEREAS, it is believed that as many as 8,000 peaceful
   24  protestors and activists were detained, most without due
   25  process, many were beaten and subjected to sham trials and
   26  sentences, and hundreds are still detained, and
   27         WHEREAS, the regime has not accepted any responsibility for
   28  the conditions that led to the protests, including shortages of
   29  food and medicine, rising prices due to inflation, and
   30  widespread power outages, and continues to blame the embargo
   31  imposed by the United States for the extreme hardship endured by
   32  the Cuban people, ignoring the need for fundamental change, NOW,
   33  THEREFORE,
   34  
   35  Be It Resolved by the Senate of the State of Florida:
   36  
   37         That the Senate expresses solidarity with the Cuban people
   38  as they peacefully demonstrate for fundamental freedoms in the
   39  face of tyranny and condemns the Cuban government’s brutal
   40  repression of demonstrators and members of the foreign press.