US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Cuba’s leader was wrong to blame the United States for historic protests and was not listening to his people.

“It would be a grievous mistake for the Cuban regime to interpret what is happening in dozens of towns and cities across the island as a result or product of anything the United States has done,” Blinken told reporters when asked about the remarks by President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

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“They are simply not hearing the voices and will of the Cuban people — people deeply, deeply, deeply tired of repression that has gone on for far too long,” Blinken said.

Blinken said that Cubans were responding to the communist leadership’s “mismanagement” of the economy and the response to COVID.

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Diaz-Canel earlier blamed the United States for pursuing a “policy of economic suffocation to provoke social unrest in the country.”