The Joe Biden administration on Friday announced
new actions on Cuba, including human rights sanctions targeting the country’s
police force, US media reports said.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control, under the
Treasury Department issued the sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human
Rights Accountability Act. The new sanctions target Cuba’s National
Revolutionary Police — the country’s primary law enforcement body; Oscar
Callejas Valcarce, the director of the police; and Eddy Sierra Arias, the police’s deputy director, CNN reported.

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“The sanctions were made in connection with
actions to suppress peaceful, pro-democratic protests,” the Treasury
Department said.

 According
to the department, the administration will announce efforts to improve internet
connectivity and other means to make sure that “we are supporting the
ability of the Cuban people to communicate with each other and receive
information as something that should be treated as a human right.”

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All these issues are expected to  be discussed in Biden’s meeting with
Cuban-American leaders at the White House on Friday.

The sanctions come after an unprecedented wave of
protests gripped Cuba a few weeks earlier when thousands took to the streets to
protest lack of food and medicine amid a grave economic crisis aggravated by
the COVID-19 pandemic and US sanctions. Meanwhile, Democrats are also under
pressure to take a tougher line against the Cuban regime amid inroads former
President Donald Trump made in 2020 among Cuban-Americans in Florida.

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Biden is slated to meet Felice Gorordo, the CEO
of eMerge Americas and the co-founder of Roots of Hope; Yotuel Romero, the lead
singer of Cuban hip hop group Orishas and Ana Sofia Pelaez, the founder of the
Miami Freedom Project, CNN report said.

The United States had last week sanctioned a key
Cuban official and a special forces unit of the country over human rights
abuses. These sanctions came after widespread criticism from Cuban Americans
targeting the administration.