The world is ‘seeing a lie’

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Saturday denounced what he said was a false narrative over unrest on the Caribbean island, as the Communist regime vigorously pushed back against suggestions of historically widespread discontent.

"What the world is seeing of Cuba is a lie," Diaz-Canel said, speaking during a rally alongside ex-president Raul Castro and before thousands of supporters who had gathered on the Malecon, Havana's famed oceanfront boulevard.

The rally, and similar ones in other cities, constituted the regime's first public response to the anti-government protests that unexpectedly brought thousands to Cuban streets last weekend.

Organizers described the event Saturday as one of "revolutionary reaffirmation."

Cries from the crowd -- "Down with the Yankees!" and "We were born to conquer, not be conquered!" -- echoed the anti-imperialist language of the original Cuban revolutionary, former president Fidel Castro.

Diaz-Canel decried what he said was the dissemination of "false images" on social networks that "glorify the outrage and destruction of property."

Those images, he said, had caused "immeasurable damage to the national soul."

On July 11 and 12, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in 40 cities shouting "Freedom," "Down with the dictatorship," and "We're hungry."

Meanwhile, Austria and the US said Saturday they were investigating reports of US diplomats and other officials in Vienna falling sick with health problems similar to the so-called "Havana syndrome".

US senators in May said that the government was investigating an apparent increase in mysterious directed-energy attacks, amid new reports of potentially brain-damaging incidents inside the US.

The still unexplained attacks have caused sickness and even brain damage in US diplomats and intelligence officials in Cuba, China, Russia and other countries.