Free Republic

A prominent pastor and religious freedom activist was arrested on Sunday in Cuba, hours before President Barack Obama arrived in the country for his official state visit. Rev Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso's home and church were surrounded by police and state security agents early in the morning on March 20, he told Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) ahead of his arrest.

President Obama’s outreach to communist-ruled Cuba risks “legitimizing the deeply entrenched Cuban regime,” Cuban human rights and opposition groups warned Wednesday, days before Obama is scheduled to become the first sitting president to visit the island nation in almost 90 years. “We would never imagine that the democratic world would legitimize the Castros,” the Forum for Rights and Freedoms and the Resistance Assembly wrote in a letter to Obama. “These individuals have destroyed the well-being of our nation. From firing squads and political assassinations to political imprisonment, thousands of Cubans inside and outside the island have had their lives taken...

....Obama held a meeting Wednesday with 16 Cuban-Americans, including music producer Emilio Estefan.... ....Estefan asked the president to meet with Cuban dissidents and create a plan of action for a more democratic Cuba. "It doesn't make sense if you go and nothing happens in the end, I think this is good that Cuban people will decide and I think that in order to decide they will have to have free elections," Estefan said.

n the eve of President (Obama’s historic visit) to Cuba, authorities there are ordering dissidents invited to meet with the American leader to stay home instead, a leading human rights activist said Saturday. Elizardo Sanchez, a Cuban anti-government activist who chronicles political detentions month-to-month, said he and most of those invited planned to defy the government order. Sanchez, speaking by phone from Havana, said U.S. officials were offering to help the activists get to the meeting with Obama, scheduled for Tuesday. “Everyone is pretty determined,” he said. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy in Havana, the White...

The good news: The discomfort over the embargo of Cuba has led to a good bargaining position in talks with the US. The bad news: Raul Castro’s the one that thinks so. Far from being grateful for the diplomatic overture from Barack Obama, Castro wants the US to pay reparations for the economic damage that Castro says the embargo caused, plus the immediate return of control over Guantanamo Bay, as the opening ante for normalizing relations: Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on...