PRISONER RELEASES RAISE HOPE FOR CUBA
From the Christian Science Monitor:
Sphere: Related ContentWhen prominent Cuban human rights advocate Francisco Chaviano was released earlier this month after 13 years in prison, he joined the growing list of political dissidents set free in the year since Fidel Castro, sidelined by poor health, ceded power to his brother Raúl.
The steady fall in Cuba’s political prisoner population since Raúl Castro took the reins of power in July 2006 is leading some Cuba experts to conclude that some kind of new day is dawning on the Caribbean communist island.
Just don’t expect that dawn to break, they add, in anything other than the slow and cautious manner in which the release of political prisoners has been carried out.
[...]
The Havana-based Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, an illegal but tolerated nongovernmental organization, reports a fall of more than 20 percent in the number of political prisoners over a year ago. The total, according to the group, stood at 246 as of June 30, down from 316 in 2006.
The number still represents by far the largest incarceration of prisoners of conscience of any country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the highest per capita rates anywhere in the world – leading some analysts to doubt that anything in Cuba has really changed.
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