An American anti-communist group answered President Raul Castro’s challenge to give him a list of Cuban political prisoners by citing 51 dissidents the communist regime has locked up in recent years.
“We have the list, President Castro,” said Marion Smith in an email to reporters after Castro appeared to deny at a press conference with Obama that his regime jailed dissidents.
Smith is executive director of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, or VOC, a nonprofit group founded to highlight the plight of those who have suffered under communism.
During an awkward press conference filled with tense moments Monday, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Castro if there were political prisoners his government had locked up and why he had not released them.
“Give me a list of these political prisoners and I will release them immediately,” Castro said through a translator. “[You] just mentioned a list of political prisoners. Give me a name or names, or after this meeting is over you can give me a list of political prisoners, and if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends.”
Last week, ahead of Obama’s visit to Cuba, Smith sent major networks and reporters a list of dissidents his group has dubbed “The Forgotten 51.” The Castro government recently released some of them after having repeatedly arrested or detained many of them. Some were imprisoned for years.
Just hours before Obama landed in the communist island, Cuban authorities arrested more than 50 dissidents who were marching to demand improved human rights. Many were members of the group Ladies in White, an organization founded in 2003 by wives and female relatives of jailed dissidents.
Obama plans to meet dissidents after his address to the Cuban people Tuesday. The White House on Friday would not release the names of the activists or say whether Obama asked to meet with any dissidents still in prison.
In the weeks leading up to the trip, White House press secretary Josh Earnest and other administration officials stressed that Obama would meet with prominent dissidents of his own choosing, a demand they say the Castro government has grudgingly allowed.
Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security, this week said the meetings would include “a diverse and important set of voices in Cuba — prominent dissidents, people who have made enormous sacrifices.”
Smith has accused the White House of obfuscating about which dissidents it is meeting to avoid bad press in advance of the trip.
The fact that Obama is offering “legitimacy” to the Castro regime by agreeing to meet Castro should be balanced by the president acknowledging the dissidents and prisoners of conscience just as publicly, he told the Washington Examiner, last week.
“This hee-hawing about not releasing the dissidents they plan to meet with — they are trying to keep our role standing up for liberty hush, hush, which will only serve to shove the pro-democracy movement into the shadows in Cuba,” he said.
“This is a real disservice and one that reverses the very public role that the U.S. has playing in standing up for human rights for decades.”
Meanwhile, Cuban-Americans in Congress are assailing the trip as a “legacy-shopping” series of photo-ops that will only further empower the Castro regime.
Critics of Obama’s decision to renew diplomatic ties with Cuba say more than 300 dissidents have been arrested on the island since March 8 in advance of the president’s visit.
Last fall, Amnesty International chronicled nearly 1,500 political arrests or arbitrary detentions of peaceful human-rights protesters in November alone, the highest one-month tally in years.
On Dec. 10, the group has said, the government arrested an estimated 200 dissidents and in some cases beat the prisoners, including members of the Ladies in White.
“The Forgotten 51,” Smith said, is regrettably not an exhaustive list — “the number of Cuban political prisoners held today is thought to be more than 100.”
“But these are 51 prisoners of conscience whose names we know and whose stories are verified. They stand witness for the rest,” he said.
The 51 include political dissidents, former Communist Party loyalists, the son of a Christian jailed in attempt by the government to force his mother to inform, and a rap artist declared a “danger to society,” Smith said.
“The families of the Forgotten 51 are kept in the dark about the legal status and the health of those unjustly imprisoned,” he wrote. “Most have been detained without acknowledgment of the crimes for which they are charged. A fair defense is nonexistent in Cuba’s authoritarian political system.”
