The United States on Thursday sanctioned key Cuban Communist Party officials for human rights abuses following widespread protests across the island nation. President Joe Biden said in a statement that the administration’s actions against a top-level Cuban official and a paramilitary organization known as Boinas Negras are “just the beginning” and the United States “will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people.” In an accompanying press release, the Treasury Department said it is sanctioning Alvaro Lopez Miera, the head of Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, as well as the Boinas Negras—officially known as the National Special Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior—over serious human rights abuses relating to anti-regime protests starting July 11. Cuban authorities have reportedly arrested some 500 demonstrators and activists who partook in the demonstrations, which some described as the largest in decades. Many protesters chanted slogans calling for Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel’s resignation …