With tense bilateral ties recently renewed after five decades and top US diplomat John Kerry due in Havana in days, Cuba briefly detained dozens of activists who were advocating that the United States should do more to curb ongoing human rights abuses. Previously, they were limited to the Havana area.
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Opposition members Antonio Gonzalez-Rodiles, his girlfriend Ayler Gonzalez, and Angel Santiesteban told EFE that they were arrested and taken in a patrol auto to a detention center at midday Sunday, after meeting with the Ladies in White at the end of the women’s customary weekly procession after attending Mass in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood.
Cuban security forces on Sunday rounded up about 50 protesters with the Ladies in White dissident group and around 40 other activists, some wearing masks with the image of US President Barack Obama, according to an AFP reporter. “The Cuban government has grown even bolder” as a result of the thawed relations, he said before Cuban police arrested him.
A State Department official speaking on background Tuesday said that “Secretary Kerry plans to meet with a broad range of civil society during the day”. On January 20, the countries officially reopened embassies in their respective capitals.
“It is a diplomatic and moral failure on this Administration’s part to have moved forward with opening an embassy in Havana and providing the regime with a windfall of U.S. dollars without achieving any of our national interests in return”, Rubio wrote.
Still, the round-up of activists over the weekend didn’t look great for the administration’s philosophy.
All were released after about four and a half hours in custody, the dissident group said.
He (Obama) is responsible for what happens, the Cuban government is emboldened by negotiations with Washington, said Angel Moya, the husband of the leader of the Ladies in White, to activists in the square outside the church, a few minutes before being arrested.
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“For us, it doesn’t matter whether it’s one or it’s 101”, he said, adding that the U.S. would continue to support “improved human rights conditions and democratic reforms in Cuba”. For one thing, it eases relations with other countries in Latin America, many of which have long insisted that America’s policy toward the Caribbean island made no sense, and which might now be more amenable to also pressuring Cuba to tolerate more dissent.
