I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM. Trump says Cuba is next on his hit list. For decades, the US has tried to isolate the country. Now Trump is tightening the screws and blockading oil and plunging the island into rolling blackouts. Life has become unbearable. Rubbish and rats are taking over the streets, Supermarket shelves are empty, and there's no fuel for its classic cars. Now Cuba
is preparing for the possibility of a US attack. Today, Havana based journalist Rory Nickel on the hell Cubans are living through and the fear of what could happen next. It's Thursday, April two, hevena and it's been really tough days across the country. Can you describe for us what you're seeing when you go out onto the streets there? How are Cuban surviving?
Well, it's been very tough recently because since January the thirty first, when President Donald Trump of the US signed an executive order essentially blockading the island from receiving any oil, there hasn't been any fuel really, with a few small exceptions imported, and that has meant that a lot of the state institutions have shout. A lot of the schools have either shut or partially shut. It means that a lot of the transport has broken down.
Rubbish on the streets, bikes to get around, power only by torch lighting. This the state of Cuba desperately running out of oil, supplies.
Very empty roads, cars not being able to go anywhere, and it makes her a very strange atmosphere.
And the notions I can't watch the news, we don't have any lights, which are essential for life. Everything's becoming complicated. It's getting worse every day.
But it's very important to remember that Cuba has been in an economic crisis for wow, nearly sort of five years now, and so people are very used to the enormous blackouts we've had, which have been worsening, and people are very used to quite a lot of the difficulties. There's been few shortages before the government's run out of money to collect trash has been huge built ups of rubbish at the street corners. People have been setting fire to that, which is unnerving to say the least. So
people are used to crisis. It's just been accelerated by these recent moves by the US government down.
We've imperialism.
Cuban President Miguel Dascanal addressed the crowd outside the US embassy on Saturday, hours after Venezuelan President Nicolas Madoro was abducted by US Special forces Rory.
We know that everything changed for Cuba, of course, when Trump captured Venezuela's president, Nicholas Maduro. What was the relationship between the countries and what impact did the US intervention there have on Cuba.
Well, the relationship was very deep ever since Hugo Chaves took over Venezuela, and Hugo Chavis used a lot of the Venezuelan all reserves to support Cuba with oil and to build up its sort of economic defenses after the loss of the Soviet Union. Then, obviously Hugo Chavis died here the position was taken over by a far less
charismatic figure, Nicholas Maduro. The situation Venezuela was very much more tricky for Maduro than it is for the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party because it's a much less deep socialist program. So he was scared of his own people and his own sort of colleagues, almost as he subsequently proved right to be, and so he surrounded himselves with Cuban security, and when Madua was lifted out in
that extraordinary abduction, it did send a shock. Thirty two Cubans were killed protecting him and their bodies, so their ashes came back to Cuba. It was a big national shock here and suddenly any oil was not coming anymore, and people immediately realized here how big a crisis that was. Because Cuba's list of friends has been growing ever shorter.
And now in Cuba we are starting to see people come out onto the streets. We had that protest in Moron that became violent. What exactly are people protesting about.
I'd be very careful. There's a very protest here is very very difficult. You protest, you go to jail for a long time and there's no real recourse, so people are terrified of it, so it doesn't really What happens is people come onto the streets, they bang pots, and you can hear it across the city some nights. What
that's about is that people haven't got electricity. They are extraordinarily frustrated because in a Caribbean climate, if you don't have electricity, you can't have a fan, means you can't sleep, your refrigerator doesn't work. People are very very short to money on money because of hyperinflation and the lack of food.
The situation you were talking about in more On, a town halfway along the island, was more extraordinary because that was a group of quite young people, I believe, who actually raided the local Communist Party headquarters and pulled out on the furniture and set light to it.
Anti government protesters attacked a Communist Party office in Cuba, according to a state and newspaper.
What always strikes me about protests here is that they usually begin with mothers of young babies who are in a desperate state. They haven't got milk to feed their babies, they're not getting anything from the state like they used to. Their babies can't sleep because the heat and the mosquitoes, and they haven't got fans to deal with that, and they will come to a government office to say please, can you do something? And other people will get involved
and that's where sort of small protests rise up. But this is not Iran that we haven't seen huge protests like that, But I think it's still pretty remarkable how little protest there is given the situation people.
Face coming up, Will Trump take Cuba?
They built this great military. I say, you'll never have to use it, but sometimes you have to use it. And Cuba's next, by the way, But pretend I didn't say that. Please pretend I did. Please, Please please, media, please disregard their statement.
Thank you very much.
Cuba's next.
We now have President Trump. He's threatening to take Cuba. His statements are getting bolder every week, and it does start to feel like, after a run, Cuba could be next. So what does he want with Cuba?
He quite literally says Cuba is next. However, he's just done something literally today, something extraordinary happened, which has a Russian tanker arrived with seven hundred thousand barrels of oil so close to it. So and he let that through and I don't know, No one knows quite why he let that through. So that's suspicious. That's interesting because that suggests to me that we know, we know that they've
been in talks. There's been talks between Marco Rubio and one of Raul Castro for del Gastro's brothers, grandsons, and that suggests that they've been allowed to import some oil in return for I don't know if we'll see some political prisoners released in the next few days or or whatever it might be. But I mean that's pure speculation. But you know, in a sort of dastardly way, the blockade is very very smart. They're just attacking all the things that government makes money on. And so you know,
tourism has gone because the planes can't come in. Then they've got rid of the doctors that Cuba would send all around the world to one hundred and sixty countries over the last how many years, and they would make a lot of money out of that. So they're being sort of put upon everything that the Cubans can make money out of. The US government's going after But what does he want. There's two things he wants so whin.
He wants the honor of taking Cuba and many many presidents have tried to get rid of these communist regime and failed, so he wants to be the man that does that. He also probably wants to move on as
fast as he can from the fiasco in Iran. But he's got a sexual state called Marco Rubio, as probably you everybody knows, and Marco Rubia's mum and dad were Cubans and he's grown and Marco Rubio grew up in the Meu of Spanish speaking Miami, and his dream is to unseat the Castros and to create what their view of a democratic Cuba would be.
We would like to see the regime no change. We would like to That doesn't mean that we're going to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There's no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime. But you know what we mean.
So I think he's There's two different strands of thought in the US government, but Trump's is pre eminent, and I think Rubio may or may not bend to that will depending on what the deal begins to look like, if indeed there is a deal.
And we're also starting to see other countries stepping in as the US steps out, Russia, Mexico, the Vatican. Is any of that making any difference at all in terms of getting resources or fuel supplies into the country. I mean, can they do anything?
I know that Claudia Schembaum of Mexico, the President of Mexico is very keen to send fuel, but she is too threatened by Trump to do that. No one else seems ready to stand up. I mean surprised. You know, there's all been all this talk about China having listening posts here, Russia having listening posts here, but neither seems that keen to go head to head with the US. People have made very good statements, but no one's actually stepped up.
What does this crisis say about the promises of the communist revolution in Cuba, especially these days when people are just struggling to get through every single day, and is the country now facing a major turning point?
I interviewed old lady on the street a few months ago. She was called martyr. I can't remember her surname, but I was very struck with her. She was you find with a lot of older people here that they tried to maintain their dignity by their their you know, their clothes are still you know, sort of well eye and pressed,
but they're very threadbare and worn. Because most old people are on pensions of between sort of one to three thousand Cuban pesos, which because of hyperinflation, because of some economic mismanagement, by the government in twenty twenty one, means has been reduced by hyperinflation two between three and five dollars a month. At the same time, the padagas where you used to get your state ration of rice, beans and so on, have emptied. So these people are really
in trouble. If they don't have family outside, they're really in trouble. Now, these are the people who built the revolution. These are the people who when Shikhavaras said, look, I want to create the new man. He didn't say women, but he meant that too. Where you give up your ego, give up your desire for personal advancement, and you put
yourself at the service of the revolution. And in return, I will promise you cradle to grave healthcare, I'll promise you food, I'll promise you a house, and I'll promise you great education. And they said yes to that, and they gave it it there all and now they have found themselves cut a drift. And Martin has said to me, we lived with the dream a devotion, and now we
have nothing. And I think you know it was a dream, and it's a dream that has affected a lot of people over the years, both in and out of this country. Lots of people followed it within, but lots of people followed it without. Many many students used to have Shaghevara on their wall, you know, and that dream of some other kind of world has collapsed. And depending on your ideology,
can blame the Americans. They've had a nearly seventy year embargo, They've done everything in their power to crush this movement. But you can also blame the Cuban government who have you know, who've advanced so far right at the beginning in women's rights and race rights, but since then there've been increasingly old men, mainly white men, running a country into the ground. And from nearly all of the Cubans I speak to, they don't really care anymore. They just
want the situation to change. It's so torturous for them that they just want a situation to change. However, having just heat fightd across Cuba to try and at least put myself on the ground with a lot of Cubans, it's been interesting to me just how many Cubans think Trump is ridiculous or pretty much the same as everyone else outside the US thinks of Trump. But all but maybe one or two blamed their own government for this current crisis.
Despite all of that, would you say, we're on the edge of a major turning point for Cuba.
Now, look, the revolution is over. But a friend of mine who's a university professor of Cuban studies, and he found me up and said, on my coffee table, I have a book. This title is End of the Revolution. It's dated twoenty thirteen, and next to it is another book that says Last Days of the Castros, and it's dated nineteen ninety three. So you know, they know how
to maintain power. They you can't rule them out. And one of the most extraordinary things that I've been watching in the last few weeks is how many castros have suddenly reappeared from various places. And the talk is all about the or being that Miguel di Escanal, the current president, who is not a custra, has to be shoved to one side and out the door, and what happens after that is anyone's guess. But it is remarkable how many castras are suddenly reappearing.
Rory, thank you so much for sharing the story of Cuba with us.
My pleasure.
Also in the news, the federal government has announced a suite of covid era support measures for businesses struggling with soaring fuel prices triggered by the war in the Middle East. The support package will include more generous Australian Tax Office payment plans, doing away with penalties and interest on unpaid tax debts, and offering support to defer payments where the business has suffered a revenue hit due to fuel supply issues.
The ATO says it will also hold off on chasing unpaid tax debts and families hoping to get away over Easter are unlikely to get cheaper petrol before the long weekend, and those in regional Australia could be waiting weeks for relief.
The federal government has cut wholesale fuel prices by twenty six cents a leader in a bid to head off the worst economic effects of the war, but analyss say the change won't be felt straight away as service stations will need to sell older, higher tax stock before bringing in the cheaper fuel. I'm Nicole Johnston and this is seven am. Thanks for listening.