Five days after Fidel Castro’s death, human rights defender Eduardo Cardet was detained and has since been held in provisional detention in Holguín, south-east Cuba. He is a prisoner of conscience who must be released immediately and unconditionally.
The United States will give priority to human rights in its complete review of U.S. - Cuba policy, according to the White House Spokesman, Sean Spicer, as reported by Agencia EFE, Spain's news agency today.
Cuba Archive documented 21 cases of death or disappearance in 2016 attributed to the Cuban political process, however, many more cases were reported for which sufficient information was unavailable and many more cases are expected in prisons but could not be added to the database.
Two prisoners died who were deprived of their freedom for “pre-criminal dangerousness,” an aberration in Cuba’s Penal Code that criminalizes the propensity to commit an offense against the social order, as subjectively determined by state authorities. Both succumbed to reported health ailments without timely or adequate medical care.
Cuban graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado Machado (‘El Sexto’) continues to be detained in a maximum-security prison, a month and a half after his arrest. He is a prisoner of conscience who must be released immediately and unconditionally.
On Thursday, when President Obama ended the “wet foot, dry foot” policy allowing any Cuban who reached U.S. shores to be granted resident status as a refugee, he merely followed his unconditional support of the Raúl Castro regime to its logical end.
The logic is easy to follow: If relations have been normalized between the United States and Cuba, why should those Cubans who arrive here in rafts be treated any differently from other migrants? Why should Cuban doctors working as indentured servants abroad be allowed to claim refugee status when they manage to reach a U.S. Embassy?
Throughout my teen years, I knew that the government of my country could not stand to see the streets full of young people. That's why my generation was forced to spend the three pre-university years in difficult “scholarships” to live-in schools in the countryside.
"Los dictadores saben más de la política de Estados Unidos que el Congreso", dice Frank Calzon, director del Centro para una Cuba libre al comentar el fin de la política de "pies secos, pies mojados."
The announcement that President Barack Obama has rescinded the so-called “Dry-foot Wet-foot” policy for Cubans fleeing Castro is another example of a heartless foreign policy developed in secrecy without public discussion, and apparently without consultation with the U.S. Congress. Not even the three Cuban-American Senators seemed to have been consulted; while the White House has been negotiating for months with the Cuban dictatorship on this issue.
Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson said Wednesday that he wouldn't support legislation to end the U.S. embargo against Cuba, a major goal of the Obama administration that now seems likely to go unfulfilled for the next several years.
Human rights activists on the island have alerted the Center for a Free Cuba that Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet was arrested by the political police this morning. He is a former political prisoner, a physician who is not allowed to practice, a follower of Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrines and the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
We are writing to you and other supporters of human rights around the world to urge you to ask President/General Raul Castro to immediately release him.
