NEW YORK CITY — U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz hosted former political prisoners and rights researchers at U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday to detail human rights abuses by Cuba’s government in Havana. Cuban diplomats tried to drown out the guests with shouts of “terrorists.” The event, “Cuba Libre: The Oppression Havana Hides,” came about a week before the General Assembly’s annual vote on the U.S. embargo.

The invitation-only meeting was held in a windowless room at the U.N. headquarters and webcast for nearly two hours. Its panelists included:

• José Daniel Ferrer, an opposition leader who says he spent more than 12 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement.
• Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, an artist who says he spent five years in prison and was arrested more than 90 times in three years. Reports say he was forced to leave Cuba in July.
• María Werlau of Cuba Archive, who said Cuba’s overseas medical missions involve coercion, surveillance and confiscation of most workers’ earnings.
• Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), who described her mother’s family being separated after fleeing Cuba in 1959.
• Ukraine’s deputy UN ambassador, Volodymyr Pavlichenko, who said Cubans were among 20,000 foreign nationals Russia recruited for the war in Ukraine, according to Kyiv.

Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat of the Cuban Democratic Directory and researchers Emilio Morales and Juan Antonio Blanco also took part, according to Cuban exile outlets.

Dissidents accused Havana’s leadership of enriching itself while citizens face blackouts, food shortages and poor health care. Cuban officials and diplomats reiterated the Cuban government’s long-held position, blaming those problems on the U.S. embargo.

Waltz presented the panel as a demonstration of what he says Havana tries to hide. He urged countries unwilling to oppose the embargo resolution to “vote no,” or at least abstain or walk away.

Disruptions

Accounts differ on exactly when and where the shouting happened, but they agree that Cuban diplomats targeted the guests.

Ferrer wrote on Facebook that the Cuban communists “staged a repudiation act” at the U.N. He said diplomats shouted “terrorists” and “out of the U.N.” at the panelists while the event was underway.

CubaNet reported that diplomats led by Cuba’s U.N. ambassador, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, shouted “terrorists,” “down with the blockade” and “long live the revolution” in a U.N. corridor as opposition figures walked to the meeting room.

Other exile outlets report cries of “shameless.”

PassBlue, which covered the event, reported that a group led by Soberón shouted that Waltz was a “liar” and yelled “terrorism” as he left toward the Delegates Entrance.

Earlier, in the hallway outside the conference room, Soberón called the event a politically motivated “charade.” CubaNet and Periódico Cubano also reported that diplomats waited for the activists as they left and shouted insults again.

Cuban officials went further online. Juan Antonio Fernández Palacios, Cuba’s ambassador to Belgium and the EU, called the attendees “a gang of frauds, mercenaries and terrorists” on X.

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called the event a “lying spectacle.” Gutiérrez-Boronat said he responded by shouting “Cuba Libre” and told the officials their time was running out.

Cuba’s Objections

Days earlier, Soberón argued that the event breached a U.N. administrative instruction requiring activities on U.N. premises to comply with the Charter, and criticized the Secretariat for allowing it. He said Cuba “will not be intimidated, blackmailed, or silenced,” called the embargo collective punishment, and accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio of pressuring heads of state to change their votes.

“We will not surrender,” he told the lobby crowd after the event.

The Vote

The General Assembly votes on the Cuba resolution on October 27-28. Last year’s tally was 165 to 7, with 12 abstentions. The U.S., Israel, Argentina, Paraguay, Hungary, North Macedonia and Ukraine voted against. The resolution is nonbinding. Waltz met about a dozen Latin American envoys the week before the event, including from Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador and El Salvador, reportedly to seek support against the resolution.

The confrontation echoes July’s extraordinary Assembly session, when Rodríguez Parrilla called Waltz a liar and Waltz replied, “This is not Havana.”

Waltz showed photos of Cuban political prisoners then, too.