J.P. Freire, head of Strategic Communications for the United States Mission to the UN, publicly responded to the Cuban official who assaulted him during the debate on the embargo at the General Assembly, highlighting the contradiction of a regime that censors its own people and then attempts to invoke American rights to shield itself from scrutiny in an international forum.
The incident occurred on Tuesday when Richard Tur de la Concepción, the first secretary of the Cuban mission to the UN, attempted to snatch the phone from Freire and struck at him several times while he was recording the confrontation between Ambassador Mike Waltz and Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla. Before being removed from that section of the room, Tur warned Freire: "If we were on the streets of New York, you would be infringing... I could sue you." Freire immediately replied: "No, you couldn't."
Freire posted a video of the exchange on his X account and dismantled the Cuban official's argument with a straightforward observation: "His own team was recording throughout the room. It's odd to think that he believed I was violating his privacy."
The American diplomat went further in his analysis: "While the Cuban mission tries to silence criticism of the abuse and wealth of the Castro regime, they seek to take advantage of American rights that they don't even understand," he wrote on X.
Freire also pointed out that the regime once again attempted to pressure UN staff to cut off the microphone of the US delegation, in response to the intervention by Waltz, who presented evidence before the Assembly of the wealth accumulated by the Cuban elite: Fidel Castro's Rolex watches valued at 40,000 dollars, the private island Cayo Piedra, a 50-meter yacht, and the 18 billion dollars in profits from the military conglomerate GAESA.
Upon learning that Tur de la Concepción studied at the Lenin School, Freire joked in a new post: "I wonder if he specialized in confiscating private property."
The consequences for the Cuban official were immediate. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed the documentation for his expulsion, and Waltz announced on television: “He’s leaving. He will be on a plane to Havana within the next 24 hours. If you put a hand on an American here in the United States, President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and I will not tolerate it.”
The episode is part of a sustained escalation of confrontations between both delegations throughout 2026. In mid-October, Cuban diplomats led by permanent representative Ernesto Soberón Guzmán staged a protest in the halls of the UN against former political prisoners José Daniel Ferrer and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, shouting "terrorists" and "get out of the UN" at them.
Tur de la Concepción was also the Cuban candidate to join the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions of the UN for the period 2027-2029, with a vote scheduled for November. Cuban analysts in exile noted that his candidacy represented an attempt by the regime to infiltrate this key budgetary body of the United Nations.
International support for the Cuban resolution against the embargo has dropped from 187 votes in 2024 to just 136 in the extraordinary session held in July 2026, representing the lowest level in over a decade, with the vote for this year's edition scheduled for this Wednesday.
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