The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, condemned on his X account this Tuesday the act of repudiation carried out by officials of the Cuban regime on Monday at the United Nations headquarters in New York against former political prisoners and Cuban activists participating in a forum organized by the U.S. mission.
The video that Waltz posted on X shows a group of Cuban diplomats shouting at the panelists, calling them "terrorists" and "liars" while filming them. "Watch how a mob of 'diplomats' from the Cuban regime at the UN harasses former political prisoners," the ambassador wrote, adding that these survivors of Havana's prisons and forced labor "are telling the hard truths that the world needs to hear."
In the images, Cuban officials can be heard repeatedly shouting "Terrorists!" at the attendees. Waltz is also seen responding to the diplomats—with Cuba's permanent representative, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, in the forefront—making a phone gesture, in a way that could not be heard clearly due to the uproar at that moment.
The incident occurred at the end of the forum “Cuba Libre: The Oppression That Havana Hides”, called by the U.S. mission and chaired by Waltz, which featured figures such as José Daniel Ferrer, founder of UNPACU, and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, founder of the San Isidro Movement, both ex-political prisoners exiled.
Ferrer reacted immediately on Facebook: "The Cuban communists just staged a repudiation act against us at the UN."
The acts of repudiation are a repressive tactic of the Cuban regime: mobs organized by the state that insult and attack dissenters. Monday's incident represents an export of that practice to the most visible multilateral stage in the world.
Soberón had tried to prevent the event from taking place, describing it as a “political motivation maneuver, organized in a questionable manner, whose clear purpose is to attack Cuba,” and invoking an administrative directive from the UN. Waltz replied that if the regime was bothered by the complaints, it should stop committing the abuses that were being reported.
This Wednesday, Soberón published a mocking video aimed at Ferrer and Waltz, which was met on social media with the term “diplochusma” to describe the conduct of the Cuban delegation to the UN.
The forum also served for Waltz to denounce the privileges of the ruling elite: he accused the regime of providing electricity for the Castro family's residential complex, a private plane, intelligence facilities, and a private island with 20 houses and a lagoon filled with dolphins, while hospitals, schools, and homes across the country experience blackouts.
The episode occurs just days before the annual vote of the UN General Assembly on the Cuban resolution against the U.S. embargo, scheduled for October 27 and 28. International support for that resolution has consistently declined: from 187 votes in 2024 to 165 in October 2025, and to just 136 in the extraordinary session of July 2026, the lowest level in over a decade.
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