San Jose, Costa Rica.- Cuban Ambassador to Costa Rica Jorge Rodriguez on Monday rejected 36 lies about his country published in La Nacion newspaper, and called on its board to allow him to refute them one by one.

In his writing, entitled ‘La Nacion Miente’ (The Nation Lies), the Cuban ambassador responded to the Editorial ‘Protests and Repression in Cuba’, published on Sunday, December 20, and said that the veracity of his statements can be verified on the Internet and in the publications on social networks of the people he mentioned.

Rodriguez indicated that Denis Solis is neither a rapper nor an artist, according to the Cuban Rap Agency that groups the interpreters of that musical genre.

What Solis himself published on social networks shows that, the assaulted and offended person in word was the authority that respectfully went to his home to give him a summons for the second time as he had not shown up for the first time, the Cuban diplomat pointed out.

The ambassador assured that Solis committed a crime of contempt provided for and punished in the Criminal Code with a six-month-to-one-year sentence in prison. He was tried in accordance with the Law of Criminal Procedure with all the guarantees; he did not go on a hunger strike in prison and appeared on television in full enjoyment of his health, Rodriguez noted.

Furthermore, the diplomat emphasized that ‘what happened in San Isidro is a farce. There is no such a movement, much less a hunger strike. Those who gathered on Damas Street published on social networks how they danced and even romped with sex toys. They are not artists. They do not have any job. They do not work at all. They live on money provided by the US Government for subversion in Cuba.

The Cuban ambassador added that it is publicly proven that they were arranged and directed by the US Embassy in Havana.

After rejecting that the house where they were staying was robbed, Rodriguez explained that its occupants refused to open the door to the health authorities, so police officers had to force their entry to comply with the measures established to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

He set out that no person was mistreated and explained that one of those present, had arrived recently from abroad and had violated the established isolation protocol, so authorities had to enforce the measures for such cases.

The Cuban ambassador invited La Nacion to inform that thanks to the established measures, Cuba has reported 137 deaths by Covid-19 and 10,127 cases; 90.3 patients have recovered from the disease, and no children, pregnant women and healthcare professionals have died of the pandemic, and intensive care units have not collapsed.

Rodriguez added that Cuba’s current death rate by Covid-19 is 1.40, below the world’s 2.25, and lower than that of the Americas, 2.54.

Additionally, he commented, 39 countries and territories from five continents have received Cuba’s modest collaboration to fight the pandemic, and Cuba is the only Latin American nation with four vaccine candidates, achieved by its own efforts.

Challenging another lie by La Nacion, the Cuban diplomat pointed out that it is public that those who gathered on November 27 at the Cuban Ministry of Culture were summoned from abroad and among them were people instructed, also from abroad, to commit vandalism and atrocious crimes to provoke a social outburst.

He guaranteeed that there was indeed dialogue between the Minister of Culture and a large group of young artists, and insisted that the calls for protests in his country are made from the US by people linked to terrorist groups and financed by the US Government. From Miami, they are demanding a military intervention against Cuba, he mentioned.

Rodriguez noted that, like the rest of the world, Cuba is suffering from the aftermaths of the pandemic, but, he denounced, in our case it is aggravated by the tightening of the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against our country for over five decades.

He recalled that the Trump administration has adopted over 120 measures against Cuba in the last two years, 43 of them during the pandemic, with the aim of depriving Cubans of the necessary resources to fight this exceptional situation. The diplomat emphasized that La Nacion does not report on this criminal policy.

Finally, the Cuban ambassador stated that the overhaul task, including the monetary and exchange unification, is not a shock measure and contemplates the protection of the most vulnerable sectors.