The Cuban government has released 53 dissidents it had promised to free under an accord with the US to restore diplomatic relations and step up economic exchanges, US officials said on Monday.
The release of the last prisoners on the list was seen as an important indicator of the Cuban government’s commitment to carrying out the agreement, which was announced by US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro on Dec. 17.
Yet it was received with skepticism by Cuban opposition figures, who said the government had released fewer prisoners than the numbers suggested.
It came less than two weeks before US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson is to arrive in Cuba for talks on Wednesday and Thursday next week.
The discussions are to focus on migration issues, but will also be used to discuss the restoration of full diplomatic relations.
US Secretary of State John Kerry sent the list of freed prisoners — which had been a closely guarded secret — to members of Congress on Monday.
However, he warned that Cubans still face many obstacles to free speech.
“We will continue to make clear to the Cuban government that neither those 53 individuals released, nor any Cuban exercising their universal right to have their voices heard, be subject to harassment, arrest or beatings,” Kerry wrote.
The 53 prisoners were on a list that US officials presented to the Cuban government last summer during the secret negotiations that led up to the Dec. 17 agreement.
However, dissidents and human rights activists said the numbers are misleading.
More than a dozen of the 53 prisoners were released before Dec. 17, and many had already served their sentences, said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, an independent group.
“It’s a fraud,” he said by telephone from Havana. “They just completed the number by including people they had already released.”
Juan Carlos Vasquez Osoria, a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, another opposition group, said he was released on Dec. 10 after he finished a two-year sentence.
“I don’t get why they included me on the list if I had already served my sentence,” he said by telephone from Santiago de Cuba. “They should have included other brothers who are still in jail.”
Human rights activists both inside and outside Cuba warned that the prisoner release was no guarantee that the government had become more tolerant of open protest.
“For that, we need reforms to our legal system and for the Cuban government to stop criminalizing human rights activities,” Sanchez said.
His records show that short-term detentions increased last year to 8,899, about 30 percent more than in 2013.
At the same time as the Cuban government has been releasing the prisoners, the authorities have continued to detain opponents of the Castro government.
A performance artist, Tania Bruguera, was arrested three times in connection with her plans to set up an open microphone in Havana’s Revolution Square on Dec. 30 and allow Cubans to speak their minds for a minute. She was later released.
Danilo Maldonado Machado, a graffiti artist known as El Sexto, was arrested on Christmas Day as he transported pigs painted with the names Fidel and Raul — referring to the president and his elder brother, the former president — according to independent media. He remains in jail, Sanchez said.
Most of those released were fairly new to opposition activities and not well known, Patriotic Union of Cuba founder Jose Daniel Ferrer said.
About 30 members of the group were released, but more remained in jail, he said.
“The United States needs to keep up the pressure to get all the political prisoners out,” he said.
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