Obama Condemns Cuba's "Clenched Fist"

The White House took a break from rallies for health care reform this week to issue a condemnation of human rights conditions in Cuba. U.S. President Barack Obama called the death of a hunger striker and repression of human rights activists as “deeply disturbing” in a March 24 statement. “These events underscore that instead of embracing an opportunity to enter a new era, Cuban authorities continue to respond to the aspirations of the Cuban people with a clenched fist,” he added. The president’s words—perhaps his harshest criticism of the Cuban government since taking office—come during a time of protests in Havana and Miami over recent attempts to silence a dissident group known as Las Damas de Blanco, or the Ladies in White.

The February 23 death of dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo drew renewed attention to Cuba’s human rights situation. Tamayo died after a hunger strike lasting more than 80 days that he carried out to protest what he described as beatings by guards in Camagüey, where he was imprisoned. His mother, Reyna Tamayo, took part in a March 17 demonstration by the Ladies in White in which pro-government supporters heckled marchers and police temporarily detained several of the protesters. The group, made up of women whose husbands or sons were imprisoned during a 2003 crackdown, marched to commemorate the seventh anniversary of what has been dubbed “Black Spring.” At that time, the Castro government ordered the arrest of 75 people—29 of them journalists.

The recent treatment of the Ladies in White sparked a March 25 rally in Miami led by Cuban-born pop star Gloria Estefan and drew the support of other celebrities such as Colombia’s Juanes and Shakira.

Before the Miami march—and another, coinciding rally by the Ladies of White in Havana—Obama released his statement condemning the treatment of dissidents in Cuba. In it he noted he had “taken steps to reach out to the Cuban people and to signal my desire to seek a new era in relations between the governments of the United States and Cuba.” The Obama administration has been perceived as taking steps to thaw chilled U.S.-Cuban relations, ending limits for Cuban Americans to travel and send remittances to the island while also allowing stronger telecommunications ties. In the meantime, bills that could ease travel restrictions for all Americans are making the rounds in U.S. Congress, leading to a hotel-building frenzy in Cuba. But the White House has also made democratization and respect for human rights a prerequisite for ending Washington’s long-held embargo on the island. Although the two countries held bilateral migration talks in the past few months, the recent human rights issues and the December 2010 imprisonment of a U.S. contractor in Cuba have slowed rapprochement.

Learn more:

• Statement by President Obama on Cuba’s human rights situation.
• Amnesty International release on Ladies in White protest.
• April 19, 2009 White House Fact Sheet: “Reaching out to the Cuban People.”
• U.S. State Department background notes on Cuba.
• “Our Hapless Man in Havana,” by AS/COA’s Christopher Sabatini, Foreign Policy, January 7, 2010.
• Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez’s Q&A with Barack Obama on U.S.-Cuban relations.