International rights groups welcomed Cuba's surprise release of three dissidents jailed last year in a broad crackdown, and called on President Fidel Castro's government to free another 65 still behind bars.
The three men were freed unexpectedly early Monday for health reasons, according to friends, relatives and local rights activists, sparking hopes for additional releases in the coming days.
PHOTO: AP
"Cuba's release of these political prisoners is a welcome move, but many more remain incarcerated in violation of their fundamental rights," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "We call on the Cuban authorities to release all of them."
Those freed on parole included economics writer Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who was hospitalized behind bars for months with a liver ailment. Espinosa Chepe's cause has become well known among some rights groups outside Cuba.
"I'm feeling happy now," Espinosa Chepe told reporters at his Havana home, noting that Monday was his 64th birthday. "I had been really pessimistic. I didn't think I was going to be let out."
Also freed early Monday for health reasons were dissidents Marcelo Lopez and Margarito Broche. Lopez has a neurological disorder, and Broche suffered a heart attack behind bars in August.
The latest releases bring to 10 the number of dissidents in the original group of 75 who have since been freed after being sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to 28 years in April last year. All were released for medical reasons.
They were charged with working with the US government to undermine Castro's socialist system, something the dissidents and US officials denied.
Vivanco regretted that the three men released on Monday were freed on parole, rather than unconditionally.
"By granting them parole only, the Cuban government leaves open the possibility of returning the dissidents to prison to serve out their sentences in the future," Vivanco said. "It's a way of intimidating them from exercising their fundamental rights."
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it was gladdened by the release of Espionsa Chepe, one of more than two dozen independent Cuban journalists held behind bars on the island.
"Their only offense was doing their jobs," said the committee's Executive Director Ann Cooper.
After his release, Espinosa Chepe spoke from his book-filled living room, where a small Christmas tree sat atop a refrigerator in the corner. Despite the difficulties suffered in jail, Espinosa Chepe said did not want to leave Cuba.
"I feel Cuban and I want to die in my own country," he said.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS