HAVANA, August 10 Relations may be warming at last between Washington and Havana, but that doesn’t mean the Castro regime is suddenly upping its human-rights game simply to please Obama.
In fact, just yesterday, the Cuban government threw an estimated 90 protesters — many clad in black-and-white Barack Obama masks — into jail for marching against the government. The arrests are part of a larger crackdown in Havana ahead of John Kerry’s historic trip to the capital city Friday to reopen the American embassy there.
“It’s his fault, what is happening,” a political prisoner named Angel Moya told an AFP reporter at the scene, referring to Obama. “The Cuban government has grown even bolder” as a result of the thawed relations, he said before Cuban police arrested him.
Midway through the protesters’ march, security forces rounded up about 90 of the demonstrators and placed them under arrest, AFP reports.