Cuba Arrests Dissidents 2 Weeks After U.S. Accord

Cuba Arrests Dissidents 2 Weeks After U.S. Accord
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLDDEC. 31, 2014

MEXICO CITY — A performance artist who was arrested Tuesday, along with
several dissidents and journalists, after she sought to test change in
Cuba and promote free speech by setting up an open mike in Havana's
Revolution Square was briefly detained again on Wednesday and told she
could not leave the country for several weeks.

The arrests, which disrupted the event, were the most sweeping roundup
of dissidents in the two weeks since the United States and Cuba said
they would normalize diplomatic relations and President Obama moved to
loosen several trade and travel restrictions associated with the
five-decade economic embargo.

President Raúl Castro has said that Cuba's political system, which
limits freedom of expression, will not change, and the Cuban authorities
made it clear that they would not tolerate what they called a "political
provocation" by the artist, Tania Bruguera, and her supporters.

Ms. Bruguera, who splits her time between Cuba and New York, had planned
to set up the microphone on Tuesday afternoon and allow Cubans to speak
for a minute at a time, articulating their visions for the country's
future. Instead, she was detained at her mother's home hours before the
event and released Wednesday afternoon, along with several others.

In a statement on her sister's Facebook page, Ms. Bruguera said she had
been held on public disorder charges. She then announced a news
conference and public gathering on the Malecón, Havana's coastal
highway, at the memorial to the Maine, the American battleship that sank
in Havana Harbor in 1898.

Agents stopped her en route to the gathering and took her away, her
sister said. In a Facebook post on Wednesday evening, her sister,
Deborah Bruguera, who lives in Italy, said Ms. Bruguera had been
interrogated about her motives and her supporters and was told she could
not leave Cuba "for two or three months" while the case was being processed.

Cuba made no official statement on the detentions, but the authorities
had declined to issue Ms. Bruguera a permit for the event.

Source: Cuba Arrests Dissidents 2 Weeks After U.S. Accord - NYTimes.com
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/world/americas/cuba-arrests-dissidents-2-weeks-after-us-accord.html?_r=0