Havana/The Cuban regime, which for more than three decades has turned the United Nations General Assembly into the scene of its main “annual diplomatic victory,” has now protested because the United States intends to use that same space to denounce political repression on the island. The reaction comes on the eve of a new vote against the US embargo, after Cuba obtained its worst result in decades in 2025, despite retaining a large favorable majority.
The permanent representative of Cuba to the UN, Ernesto Soberón, reported this Friday the celebration, next Monday, October 19, of a meeting convened by the Permanent Mission of the United States under the title Cuba Libre: The oppression that Havana hides. According to the diplomat, it is a maneuver aimed at attacking the Cuban Government and promoting a hostile narrative against the country.
“The United Nations is not a platform for political persecution, interference in the internal affairs of States or campaigns aimed at undermining their sovereignty,” said Soberón, who accused Washington of violating the rules that regulate the use of the international organization’s facilities.
In 2022, Beijing responded with a diplomatic protest – almost identical to the one Cuba now presents –, where it described a similar meeting as a “political farce.”
However, the administrative instruction ST/AI/2019/4, invoked by the ambassador himself, establishes in its section 4.4.c that the permanent missions of the Member States can request spaces to organize meetings, conferences and other events, even when external entities sponsored by them participate.
The regulations require that activities be compatible with the principles of the United Nations and allow administrative authorities to reject requests or cancel meetings. However, the Cuban Government has not publicly presented any concrete evidence that establishes that the event called by Washington fails to comply with these conditions.
Nor is it an unprecedented initiative. As of December 2017, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States organized at the New York headquarters a conference on the torture, arbitrary detention and sexual abuse suffered by forcibly repatriated North Korean women. Among the participants were a defector from the Asian country and international experts.
In October 2022, the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western governments promoted another meeting on the persecution of Uyghurs in China. Beijing responded with a diplomatic protest –almost identical to the one now presented by Cuba–, where he described the meeting as a political farce and accused Washington of instrumentalizing human rights to harm its adversary.
The seven negative votes represented a record since these votes began in 1992.
Venezuela was also the subject of a similar initiative. In March 2019, the United States and ten other governments sponsored an event at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, with testimonies about the arbitrary detentions, torture and persecution of opponents under the regime of Nicolás Maduro.
The protest in Havana also coincides with a particularly delicate moment for its traditional diplomatic campaign against the embargo. In October 2025, the resolution titled Need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba It obtained 165 favorable votes, seven against and twelve abstentions.
Although the majority once again supported the lifting of sanctions, Cuba lost 22 favorable votes compared to the previous year. The seven opposing votes represented a record since these votes began in 1992. The United States and Israel were joined by Argentina, Paraguay, Hungary, North Macedonia and Ukraine. kyiv in particular justified his rejection due to the attitude of the Cuban authorities towards the recruitment of citizens of the Island to fight on the Russian side in Ukraine.
Soberón now accuses the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, of directly pressuring heads of State and Government to modify their votes in the next session, scheduled for October 27 and 28. Although Washington has carried out diplomatic efforts to reduce support for the resolution, the Cuban representative did not detail what specific threats support his accusations of blackmail.
The resolutions for the lifting of the US embargo, of a non-binding nature, have a fundamentally symbolic scope. And Havana has turned each vote into a supposed “victory” for the Revolution, deliberately confusing the international rejection of sanctions with support for its political system. Now, when Washington intends to put on the table the repression that the regime prefers to keep out of the debate, the forcefulness of the Cuban protests reveals the fear that this year’s result will deepen the diplomatic setback suffered in 2025.
