A massive rally was staged by Cubans in Havana on May 22, 2026, demonstrating their unity in defending former president Raul Castro after the recent indictment against him by the US Trump regime on murder charges, reports the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) via its media organ, Ang Bayan. The US has been threatening to put Castro on trial “willingly or by other means.”

The publication wrote that Cubans fear that the US is preparing to kidnap Castro through direct military intervention, similar to the US kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the indictment is “a political action with no legal basis.” Its sole purpose is to “pad the fabricated case (against Castro) to justify the foolishness of a military intervention against Cuba.”

The U.S. Department of Justice’s accuses Castro, serving as Cuba’s minister of defense in 1996, for personally approving the downing of two civilian aircraft operated by the group Brothers to the Rescue. Four men died in the shootdown, three of them US citizens.

Díaz-Canel said the 1996 actions were a “legal act of self-defense” against the repeated and dangerous violations of Cuba’s airspace by dissident groups set up and funded by the US. Cuba clarified that it had repeatedly warned those groups prior to the incident not to violate the country’s airspace.

Cuba also called the indictment of Castro “utter hypocrisy” in light of the US carrying out extrajudicial bombings of civilian ships in the Caribbean and Pacific accused of involvement in illegal drug smuggling.

Through several earlier pronouncements, the CPP views the vicious U.S. oil blockade and related sanctions that caused massive shortage of fuel and consequently food, medicines and other vital supplies as “collective punishment” and even genocide against the Cuban people. It asserted that U.S. actions are a part of a broader pattern of imperialist domination, including extrajudicial bombings and interference in sovereign nations.