The United States Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, denounced on Tuesday on his X account the act of repudiation that officials of the Cuban regime carried out on Monday at the United Nations headquarters in New York against former political prisoners and Cuban activists who were 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. "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 prisons and forced labor in Havana "are speaking the hard truths that the world needs to hear."
In the images, Cuban officials can be heard repeatedly shouting "Terrorists!" at the attendees. It can also be seen that Waltz is responding to the diplomats—with Cuba's permanent representative, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, at the forefront—making a phone gesture, in a gesture that could not be clearly heard due to the uproar at that moment.
The incident occurred at the conclusion of the forum “Free Cuba: The Oppression That Havana Hides”, organized by the U.S. mission and presided over by Waltz, which included figures such as José Daniel Ferrer, founder of UNPACU, and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, founder of the San Isidro Movement, both former political prisoners exiled.
Ferrer reacted immediately on Facebook: "We just experienced a repudiation event at the UN by the Cuban communists."
The acts of repudiation are a repressive tactic of the Cuban regime: mobs organized by the state that insult and assault dissidents. Monday's episode represents an export of that practice to the most visible multilateral stage in the world.
Soberón had attempted to prevent the celebration of the event, labeling it as a "political motivation maneuver, organized in a questionable manner, whose clear purpose is to attack Cuba," invoking an administrative instruction from the UN. Waltz responded that if the regime was disturbed by the accusations, it should stop committing the abuses being reported.
This Wednesday, Soberón posted a mocking video aimed at Ferrer and Waltz, which was received on social media with the term "diplochusma" to describe the behavior 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 jet, intelligence facilities, and a private island with 20 houses and a lagoon of dolphins, while hospitals, schools, and homes across the country suffer from power outages.
The episode occurs just days before the annual voting at 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 steadily 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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