Repeating Islands

Jean-Herve Deiller (Agence France-Presse) reports that Cuban President Raul Castro has unveiled plans to pardon around “3,000 prisoners for ‘humanitarian reasons’—a group amnesty of unprecedented size—and ‘gradually’ reform onerous laws restricting foreign travel.” President Castro presented the plans at the most recent parliamentary meeting, held in Havana, Cuba, on December 23, 2011. Here are excerpts with a link to the full article below:

The pardons include 86 foreign nationals from 25 countries, and will take place “in the coming days,” Castro said in a closing address to the National Assembly Friday. However US contractor Alan Gross, jailed in Cuba for espionage, will not be among those released, top foreign ministry official Josefina Vidal told AFP. Gross — a State Department contractor arrested in December 2009 for delivering laptops and communications gear to Cuba’s small Jewish community — “will not be on the list” of foreigners to be pardoned, the official said.

Castro said factors that played into the pardon decision included requests from the Catholic Church and various Protestant churches, and the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. The pardon is the largest ever under the communist regime, much larger than the 299 prisoners released ahead of the visit of the late pope John Paul II in January 1998.

Cubans were intensely and emotionally keen to hear about migration reform, which Castro — the ex-defense chief who took over from his brother, revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, in July 2006 — has promised but not yet delivered. “I reaffirm my unswerving will to gradually introduce the changes required in this complicated area,” Raul Castro said.

Many people “consider a new migratory policy an urgent issue, forgetting the exceptional circumstances that Cuba is going through,” he added. He referred to the US trade embargo on the island and Washington’s alleged “subversive” policy, “always on the lookout for any opportunity to reach its known purposes.” Castro said the administration of President Barack Obama in Washington “lacked political will to improve relations with Cuba.” But he reiterated Havana’s readiness to move toward normalization of relations with the United States “in all areas that can benefit both countries.” [. . .] Local experts believe Castro intends to end the requirement of exit visas (for Cubans on the island), entrance visas (for Cubans living overseas who return home) and the legal status of “permanent emigrant.”

Castro did not give details about who would be released, but did say that 13 women were among the foreigners being freed. The release of foreigners would depend on “whether the governments of their countries of origin accept their repatriation,” Castro said.

For full article, see http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/24