Terence Neilan Contributor
AOL News
(July 8) -- Cuba has agreed to release 52 political prisoners, prompting
Spain's foreign minister to call on the European Union to ease its
refusal to normalize relations with Havana and to describe the move as
an opportunity for the U.S. to improve its fractured ties.
The move came after three days of talks between Cuba's Roman Catholic
Church, led by Cardinal Jaime Ortega, and President Raul Castro. Spanish
Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos also joined the discussions this
week.
Five prisoners were to be released Wednesday, with the rest to be freed
in the coming months. They were among 75 arrested in a crackdown on
dissidents in 2003.
One of those held, Guillermo Farinas, has been on a hunger strike for
more than 130 days following the death of another hunger striker in
February. Farinas, a journalist and psychologist, is demanding the
release of 23 ailing prisoners who are believed to be among those to be
freed, Reuters reported, but will not end his protest until their
release is confirmed.
Laura Pollan speaks with hospitalized dissident Guillermo Farinas on the
phone in Havana, Wednesday July 7.
Franklin Reyes, AP
Cuba has promised to free 52 political prisoners in what would be the
island's largest release of dissidents since 1998. Here, Laura Pollan, a
dissident activist, speaks by phone with prisoner Guillermo Farinas.
Moratinos said the agreement "opens a new era" in Cuba, according to the
BBC, adding that "I think there is no reason" for the EU "to maintain a
common position any longer." The EU has refused to change its stance,
initiated in 1996, until Cuba shows an improvement in its position on
human rights.
"I expect my European colleagues to now respond," he was quoted as saying.
Moratinos was equally positive about the prospect of new relations
between Havana and Washington, which has maintained an economic embargo
on Cuba.
The release "logically has to help relations with the United States,
because now there is no excuse," Reuters quoted him as saying.
A former U.S. diplomat in Havana who is said to favor a lifting of the
embargo, Wayne Smith, told The New York Times that the prisoner release
should push the Obama administration to "do something to encourage the
trend."
A similar view was expressed by Laura Pollan, the head of Ladies in
White, a leading dissident group in Cuba whose husband was one of those
detained in 2003.
"I believe we are at the doors of a change, a significant change," she
told Reuters, adding that she hoped it would be "the first steps of a
true freedom, of a true democracy."
But a Cuban-born member of Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican
from Florida, warned against being "fooled" by Cuba, saying "maximum
pressure" would have to exerted on Havana until all political prisoners
were free.
Once the releases are completed, about 100 dissidents will remain jailed
in Cuba.
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/cuba-vows-to-free-52-political-prisoners/19546721
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