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CUBA POLITICS SECTION - Havana Journal > Humanitarian
AP
Cuban police harassed and briefly jailed some 35 political dissidents this week in the eastern city of Camaguey, a Cuban human rights group said Friday.
Twenty-three dissidents were “brutally beaten and detained” after marching Wednesday in a demonstration in Camaguey, 530 kilometers (330 miles) east of the capital Havana, the underground Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) said in a statement.
The demonstrators were protesting “the cruel and inhuman treatment” of Orlando Zapata, a jailed political dissident on a hunger strike since December, according to CCDHRN president Elizardo Sanchez.
The protesters were briefly jailed, then released.
Another…
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Sarah Stephens | Huffington Post
After a sub-par performance in Latin America during 2009, the Obama administration has truly risen to this occasion with its forceful response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. President Obama has ordered his agencies to put this disaster on the top of their agendas, and has already committed $100 million in U.S. assistance. But the President, wisely, has cautioned it will take some long days before the full measure of U.S. relief can arrive in Haiti and show results.
These efforts will move faster because of an agreement with Cuba’s government made public today that…
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By Suzanne Pardington | The Oregonian
A humanitarian aid group from the First Unitarian Church of Portland was detained today at the Havana airport.
Carol Slegers, a group leader, sent an e-mail to church members saying nine people were being held in the airport and five others were sent back to Cancun, where their Cuba flight originated.
Paul Pitkin, a church member who stayed in Portland, said he called a friend in Cuba who was able to talk to Slegers through a glass partition at the airport. Slegers told the friend the group will sleep tonight at the airport and…
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By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ | The Associated Press
Hundreds of government supporters shouted insults and pro-Castro slogans at about 50 wives, mothers and other female relatives of Cuban political prisoners as they marched Wednesday through a crowded Havana neighborhood in the name of human rights.
There were no injuries among the “Women in White,” a political opposition group that holds small, silent marches along Fifth Avenue in a wealthier part of the Cuban capital each Sunday after attending Roman Catholic Mass. The women dress head-to-toe in white.
The demonstrations usually only go for a few blocks and rarely draw the ire…
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AP
Activists from 32 little-known organizations opposed to Cuba’s communist government issued a call for an end to social repression on the island at a Thursday gathering in the home of a prominent human rights activist.
The event took place in the western Havana home of internationally known activist Francisco Chaviano, a veteran Cuban dissident who was released in 2007 after 13 years in prison.
Participants crowded into a small room where Chaviano read a statement on behalf of the grass-roots political groups from 10 Cuban provinces.
Surrounded by supporters, Cuba’s opposition leader Francisco…
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Nine Cuban protesters holed up in a Havana home for 36 days are now taking part in a liquids-only fast.
Protester Lazaro Yuri Valle Roca told CNN Friday after beginning the fast this week, a doctor urged one protester engaged in a full hunger strike to begin consuming fluids.
Valle Roca said despite the doctor’s recommendations, the protesters remain committed to calling for increased rights for citizens of the Communist island nation.
“We remain firm in our decision and our disposition is to go forward,” he said.
Ann Louise Bardach, author of “Without Fidel: A Death Foretold…
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BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA | El Nuevo Herald
The Cuban government has denied exit permits to about 30 Cuban college students who had been offered U.S. government-funded scholarships for academic programs at American academic institutions.
Not only did the students lose the chance to attend classes for free in the United States, but some were accused of ideologically losing their way and were expelled from their colleges in Cuba. Those who were members of the Communist Youth Union were booted out, several students said.
``I’ve been told that I have been expelled from the university and that I have a…
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By WILL WEISSERT | AP
Cuba delivered a formal protest Friday to diplomats from five European Union embassies who visited the home of a jailed dissident.
The Ministry of Foreign Relations summoned the diplomats from Sweden, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland and Germany to denounce the visit, according to two of the officials.
Staffers at foreign embassies often have contacts with the families of jailed opposition activists, sometimes drawing rebukes from Cuba which sees the visits as meddling in its internal affairs. The government views the dissidents as “mercenaries” funded by countries such as the United States that are trying to…
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The International Press Institute called Tuesday for the “immediate release” of the 22 journalists jailed in Cuba and warned of the risk of downplaying the importance of the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and the press.
The Vienna-based IPI noted in a statement that the U.N. Human Rights Council recently praised Cuba for making progress in promoting rights related to nutrition, education and health, but not freedom of expression.
“Various national delegations, including those of Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Chile, Italy and Slovakia, expressed concern about Cuba’s violation of the right to freedom of expression…
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France 24
Foreigners are welcome in Cuba, as long as they stick to the beaches and don’t meddle with local politics. A young French student learnt this the hard way, when she was forcibly deported from the island after she befriended local political dissidents.
Marie-Bérengère Ruet, a graduate student in the Parisian Institute of Political Science (Sciences-Po), spent two months in Cuba last spring to gather material for her thesis on Cuban opposition and resistance groups. During her stay, she met with, interviewed and befriended several opposition activists, considered as dangerous delinquents by the Cuban authorities. Their crime? Filtering…
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