Freed Cuban dissidents speak of their hopes for change

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/13/freed-cuban-dissidents-speak-hopes-change

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Recently freed Cuban dissidents have described their plans to campaign for change on the island following the historic deal between Havana and Washington that led to their release.

Fifty-three prisoners have been liberated under the agreement between the US president, Barack Obama, and his Cuban counterpart, Raúl Castro, on 17 December, most of them in the past week. Two others, who were not on the US list, have been freed.

Although many still face parole restrictions, including a prohibition on overseas travel, concern about being returned to prison is mixed with optimism that the bilateral deal will create opportunities for activism.

Angel Yunier Remón Arzuaga, a rapper known as “The Critic”, told the Associated Press that the US-Cuban detente “gives me the strength to keep demanding our rights and freedoms”.

Arrested in 2013 after he said state security agents painted his house with pro-government slogans, leading to a fight with police, Remón was sentenced to six years for attacking state security. Held five miles from his house in eastern Cuba, he was loaded into a car on Thursday and driven outside the prison.

“Right there they gave me a release document and said ‘get out,’” Remon said.

“It’s a hard blow against the regime when they themselves have to let out people when they supposedly had proof that they’d committed crimes,” he said. He called the US-Cuba deal “a historic moment, an overwhelming event for my country, and I feel very proud”.

Miguel Alberto Ulloa, a Havana resident arrested in 2013 for painting anti-government slogans, said he will stay at home until the charges against him expire in two months but that he’s “eager to go to the street, speak out, show that I’m dissatisfied”.

He said he was optimistic the bilateral deal would bring change to Cuba.

“I think that the Cuban people really need something like what was announced,” he said. “Now I have to keep fighting and find the path so that they don’t jail me again. I’m not going to stop.”

Seventeen of the prisoners had already been released before the deal was announced, it emerged this week. Of the remaining 38, about a third are subject to “conditional release”, meaning they must periodically report to the courts supervising their cases, said the dissident Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Another third were released on parole, requiring them to serve out their terms outside prison but unable to leave the country, it said.

Others were simply freed pending trial, with charges still intact, or had their sentences altered.

Virtually all can be returned to jail for minor offences and some say they were told to stay away from opposition politics.

“None of them have unconditional freedom. None of them,” said Elizardo Sánchez, leader of the commission, although he added he did not believe the government would harass them.

Some have already begun testing the limits of their freedom. Haydee Gallardo, who was released last week along with her husband, took part in a protest march organised by the Ladies in White group on Sunday.

Though she believes she is one of the few to have no conditions set on her release, she says she worries her husband Angel Figueredo could be returned to jail.

“I don’t think the repression will stop considering that they continue to keep watch over us,” Gallardo told Reuters. “I’m afraid the repression will result in him getting locked up again.”

David Bustamante, who was arrested in May for shouting demands for food from his rooftop, says he has been released subject to a curfew and warned not to resume political activism.

“I don’t feel free,” Bustamante told Reuters by telephone. “They are snatching our freedom every day because we don’t have freedom of expression.”

Martha Beatriz Roque has lived under what Cuba calls “extrapenal licence”, or parole, for 10 years. She is out of prison but unable to leave Cuba and presumes she is closely watched by state security.

“There are a lot of things you can’t do and other things you don’t know whether you can do or not,” Roque said. “Those under extrapenal licence depend on a judge, to whom you have to report regularly. Those on conditional release are constantly responding to the justice system, any time the system decides.”

The historic deal also involved a swap of prisoners convicted of espionage in both the US and Cuba. Three Cubans imprisoned in the US returned to a heroes’ welcome in Havana in December. On Tuesday the family of a high-level Cuban spy for the CIA revealed that the he was now in the United States.

Rolando Sarraff, a former cryptologist in Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence helped to crack a Cuban spy network in Florida. He was hailed by Obama as one of Washington’s most valuable assets when he announced the thaw in relations.

In the first report of his whereabouts and wellbeing, his sister told the Associated Press that Sarraff was “free and doing fine”.