Bloody Monday in Cuba: Hundreds Likely Missing, Police Fire into Crowds of Protesters

A near-nationwide internet blackout severely limited the ability of protesters to share updates and images from Cuba, but the little that has trickled out suggests the island experienced another wave of thousands-strong protests on Monday that has triggered severe communist repression.

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets of nearly every major city in the country on Sunday, peacefully assembling to demand an end to communism. Protesters shared videos of crowds marching peacefully on Havana’s iconic Malecón and throughout major cities like Camagüey, Cárdenas, Holguín, and Santiago de Cuba, some of them waving American flags and others sporting Catholic and other Christian imagery in defiance of the officially atheist Communist Party. President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the figurehead of the Castro regime, responded to the protests by urging “revolutionaries” to violently assault unarmed protesters on the streets, describing his call as an “order of combat.”