Cuban opponents see prisoner releases as an “exchange” for US benefits.

The Cuban government’s announcement to release 553 prisoners has been described by an analyst and opponents as “an exchange” by the regime to obtain benefits from the United States, including the island’s removal from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

The government of Miguel Díaz-Canel reported on Monday the 14th that he released these people “in the spirit of the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025”, and that this decision had been communicated to Pope Francis in a letter sent in the first days of January.

In its note, the Cuban regime did not indicate how many of those released were political prisoners, but noted that “the releases are carried out on the basis of a careful analysis based on the different modalities contemplated by the legislation” and that “these people “They will receive their respective benefits gradually.”

The announcement was well received by the Holy See, whose Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said that “it is a sign of great hope at this beginning of the Jubilee.” For its part, Vatican News He indicated yesterday that these releases were carried out “within the framework of mediation with the Catholic Church that has been going on for years.”

However, geopolitics expert Alberto Fernández pointed out on EWTN News that, although the communist regime “has given a religious disguise” to its announcement, it is “a hostage exchange for economic and political reasons, with the Biden administration.” ”.

The Democratic administration of Joe Biden, which on January 20 will hand over the government to Republican Donald Trump, announced that it will remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism that also includes North Korea, Syria and Iran.

According to the White House, this decision was facilitated with the help of the Vatican to ensure the release of political prisoners on the island.

The island was on this list between 1982 and 2015, when Barack Obama removed it as part of his “thaw policy” with Raúl Castro. However, it was included again on January 11, 2021, in the final days of the first Trump administration.

The Republican administration said its goal was to “deny the Castro regime the resources it uses to oppress its people at home and counter its malign interference in Venezuela and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.”

Robert L. Muse, a lawyer specializing in US sanctions on Cuba, told BBC News World that now, by leaving the list, the island could benefit in sectors such as tourism, key to its economy, since travelers from the European Union, Chile, South Korea or Japan could visit the Caribbean country without fear of losing the exemption. tourist visa to the USA

Likewise, Cuba could now access financing from foreign entities, although this is not certain, being a technically bankrupt country that has defaulted on its payments.

However, all this could not prosper if Trump includes Cuba again in the group of countries sponsoring terrorism.

During the dialogue with EWTN News, Fernández, who is Cuban, highlighted from Washington DC the mediation of the Catholic Church to seek the release of political prisoners, especially “those who were arrested after the demonstrations of July 11, 2021.” .

That Sunday, thousands of Cubans protested in dozens of cities due to shortages of food, medicine, power outages and to demand freedom. It was the largest demonstration so far by the communist regime, which reacted by imprisoning an unknown number of protesters, several of them young people.

In that sense, Fernández expressed that “if the regime wanted to honor the Jubilee, the first thing it should do is resign the regime, that is, end the regime, because this is a regime that is the complete opposite, which is faith, what the Jubilee is, what liberation is.”

Prisoners must be released without conditions

For its part, the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) stated that “Cuban political prisoners should not be the subject of barter and/or negotiations regarding the policies of other states towards Cuba.”

The MCL, which during its history has suffered persecution, imprisonment and exile of several of its members, added that the prisoners “must have their dignity as human beings respected and must be released in their entirety and without conditions.”

“Not only for humanitarian reasons but essentially for a matter of justice, since they are innocent of the charges that have been made against them,” he indicated in a statement.

Likewise, he pointed out that the “appeasement policy” of the United States government “only encourages and emboldens dictators and empowers repressors and terrorists, by giving them the feeling, and more than that the certainty, that they can act with total impunity”.

“We regret that the Democratic administration is trying to clean up the image of a bloody dictatorship, perhaps as revenge for the broad political support of Cuban exiles for their Republican Party opponent in the last presidential election,” he said.

The MCL noted that “freedom and democracy in Cuba should be objectives of the two main political parties in the United States and not an issue of a political campaign.”

“Releasing, in Cuba, is not liberating”

The NGO Prisoners Defenders, which monitors the situation of political prisoners in Cuba, also spoke out. Since his websitecalled to be attentive to the way in which the regime will release the 553 people, since “according to what is understood from the official statement,” they “would keep their sentences intact” and therefore we would have to “talk about releases due to sentence subsidies.”

“If this were confirmed, the news would not be as positive as the Cuban regime wants to make it seem. Releasing, in Cuba, is not liberating,” he noted.

He explained that if this were the case, “some would obtain conditional release, others perhaps extra-penal licenses, and others a series of sentence subsidies,” which is “far from being ‘releases’.”

Martí News collected the testimony of Liván Hernández Sosa, one of the first political prisoners released “on parole.”

“They explained to us the conditions under which I was going to leave: I have to work, I cannot be on social networks, I cannot demonstrate, much less against the regime. “I am very happy, and even if it is under unfair conditions, I am happy to be here, in my house, with my wife, with my children,” he expressed.

Among the other hundreds of those released from prison are José Daniel Ferrer, founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba; Donaida Pérez, a 53-year-old woman imprisoned for protesting on July 11, 2021, and Yandier García Labrada, an MCL activist convicted four years ago for having “publicly complained against the disorganization and irregularities in the supply of inputs.”