Cuba frees dissidents from crackdown condemned by U.S.

Cuba frees dissidents from crackdown condemned by U.S.
By Daniel Wallis and Daniel Trotta

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba freed some leading dissidents on Wednesday after
holding them overnight to thwart an unauthorized demonstration in a
crackdown that has tested its new detente with the United States.

Police arrested several political opponents on Tuesday and kept others
under virtual house arrest ahead of an open microphone protest that was
to have taken place outside the communist government headquarters in
Havana's Revolution Square.

The detentions were typical of how Cuba breaks up opposition protests
but took on greater significance coming just two weeks after U.S.
President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro said on Dec. 17
they would restore diplomatic ties and end decades of hostility.

Among those released on Wednesday was performance artist Tania Bruguera,
who organized the demonstration. After about an hour of freedom, she was
picked up again by police and lectured for about two-and-a-half hours,
she said.

Between her back-to-back detentions, she told Reuters in an interview
that she planned to hold a similar, scaled down event on the seafront
near her mother's home. But as she walked toward it she was picked up by
plainclothes officers for a second time.

The planned event never took place.

"I'm not doing this as a dissident, I'm doing it as a normal person,"
she said at her mother's apartment just minutes before her second
arrest. "I'm not a counter-revolutionary, like they say. I'm from a
revolutionary family. ... I'm going to continue the project."

A Cuban government official declined to comment.

One of the other high-profile detainees, Reinaldo Escobar, the husband
of prominent dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, was released late on
Tuesday night.

The dissident Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National
Reconciliation said more than 50 Cubans were detained and that about 10
of them were still being held on Wednesday night.

"At the same time the Cuban government is normalizing its relations with
the U.S. government, it has not decided to normalize relations with the
people of Cuba," said Elizardo Sanchez, who heads the commission.

"We don't think there will be a cause-and-effect relationship between
renewing diplomatic relations with the United States and an improvement
of human rights in Cuba."

Cuban officials do not reveal information about police activity, and
Reuters could not verify the numbers of detentions.

Obama's policy shift on Cuba has drawn some opposition inside the United
States, led by Cuban-American senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez.

They both criticized Obama anew after the detentions, arguing that Cuba
now has even less incentive to improve its human rights record and
asking how the president would respond.

The U.S. State Department condemned the Cuban actions, but gave no
indication they would derail a high-level visit to Havana in January for
talks on restoring diplomatic ties.

Obama has said Cubans should not face harassment or arrest for
expressing their views and that Washington will continue to monitor
human rights on the island.

Castro applauded Obama for changing U.S. policy but says Cuba will not
change its one-party system.

He also warned two weeks ago that "virulent critics," including
Cuban-Americans in the U.S. Congress and Cuban exiles, would "do
everything possible to sabotage the process, without ruling out
provocative actions of any kind."

Under the deal with the United States, Cuba agreed to release 53 people
described by Washington as political prisoners, but they have not yet
been freed and dissidents complain they do not even know who is on the list.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta, Daniel Wallis, Rosa Tania Valdés and
Enrique de la Osa; Editing by Kieran Murray, Andre Grenon and Ken Wills)

Source: Cuba frees dissidents from crackdown condemned by U.S. - Yahoo
News -
http://news.yahoo.com/leader-cuba-protest-apparently-detained-again-police-002956064.html;_ylt=AwrBEiIsNqVUyAEAGP_QtDMD