The communist regime of Cuba, in an apparent attempt to curry international favor, has announced it will pardon 787 common criminals in response to Pope Francis’s call for mercy towards the imprisoned. There is no indication any of these are prisoners of conscience, as Havana officially denies the existence of political prisoners.
Human rights researchers have published an updated study accusing China of conducting tens of thousands of organ transplants using the bodies of political prisoners without their consent. While the practice has been known to occur in the communist nation for decades, Beijing alleges that it long stopped harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.
An extensive report published at the Cuba Archive Truth and Memory Project and flagged by the Cuban-American interest site Babalú Blog exposes the Cuban communist government’s decades-long scheme of profiting from blood and plasma-based products taken from unknowing or unwilling “donors.”
The Cuban government exerted extraordinary efforts this week to keep pro-democracy activists out of sight of international media. They failed, with one dissident demanding freedom for prisoners of conscience live on ESPN. That dissident: Yasser Rivero Boni, a political prisoner himself and the son of a member of the Ladies in White movement.
Obama could inspire a new generation of Cubans to stand up for their rights. However, there were at least five major problems with Obama’s Cuba speech.
Cuban leader Raúl Castro denied the existence of political prisoners when questioned by a U.S. reporter during a joint news conference with President Barack Obama on Monday, hours after the mass arrests of peacefully protesting political dissidents.
Cuban anti-communist dissidents have denounced communist agents – many, they say, Cuban soldiers disguised as civilians – for attacking the headquarters of the Ladies in White group, setting a fire in front of the building, and burning copies of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The pastor of an underground Evangelical church in Camagüey, Cuba, has denounced the communist government for leveling the building in which he holds religious services as a warning to others that openly practicing Christianity on the island will result in government persecution.
The Cuban government has begun feeding political prisoner Vladimir Morera Bacallao “against his will,” his wife says, more than 80 days since he began a hunger strike protesting his arrest for hanging an anti-communist sign on his window.
As the White House begins to hint that President Barack Obama would like to visit Cuba before his term is over, a political prisoner freed and re-arrested due to the U.S.-Cuba “normalization” deal has lost cognitive functions as he struggles to survive his 87th day on a hunger strike.
Vladimir Morera Bacallao, a Cuban dissident allegedly freed as part of President Obama’s deal with Cuba but sentenced to four years in prison shortly after being released, is currently on his 81st day of a hunger strike that has left him in critical condition.
The bishop in charge of the pastoral care of prison inmates in Cuba declared Wednesday that Cuba is holding a number of political prisoners on the island, some of whom are serving long sentences, a claim that Havana has repeatedly denied.
An Israeli citizen jailed for 15 years in Egypt on charges of spying was freed from prison on Thursday, the Prime Minister’s Office said. Ouda Tarabin, a Bedouin from Rahat, who has denied all the allegations against him, was returned
Washington Post bureau chief Jason Rezaian has been languishing in an Iranian prison cell for nearly nine months, with only the most cursory access to legal counsel. The newspaper reports today that Rezaian is having significant problems being allowed to speak to his attorney, and will remain in prison until his trial begins for “espionage.”
President Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight, like so many of its predecessors, relied heavily on America’s moral duty to lead the world in values for its applause lines. The President vowed to “respect human dignity,” to “defend free speech, and advocate for political prisoners, and condemn the persecution of women, or religious minorities, or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender,” to robust audience support.
There isn’t much for the United States in any of President Obama’s lame-duck fire-sale deals with foreign dictators. One of the very, very few things Cuba was expected to do, in exchange for billions of dollars pumped into the Castro’s pockets by relaxed U.S. sanctions, was release some of the political prisoners rotting in its dungeons.
Three months after the Communist mayor of a Paris suburb, Valenton, named a street, Barghouti Alley, after a convicted Palestinian terrorist, another municipality of a second Paris suburb has honored the same man.
(Reuters) – Cuba’s most prominent dissidents say they have been kept in the dark by U.S. officials over a list of 53 political prisoners who will be released from jail as part of a deal to end decades of hostility between the United States and Cuba.
