2010-06-08 / Juan O. Tamayo
Two members of Congress have freed $15 million for pro-democracy programs in Cuba, but are still blocking $2.6 million for a contractor whose employee is jailed in Havana, according to Washington officials.
``I am pleased the State Department has finally released these important funds,'' Sen. George Lemieux, R-Fla., said in a statement Monday revealing the release of the $15 million.
The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are expected to distribute the funds over the next months to Cuban civil society groups in the form of supplies such as computers, medicines and aid to the families of jailed dissidents.
The release of the funds, help up since early 2009, is likely to anger the Cuban government but brought quick praise from supporters of the dissidents.
``At a time when dissidents are under siege, they need to know that the U.S. stands on their side,'' said Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of the pro-embargo U.S.-Cuba Democracy political action committee.
State Department and USAID officials did not comment on the funds' release, but Lemieux staffers said his office was verbally informed of the change last week.
Congress appropriated $20 million for Cuba Democracy Assistance funds in the fiscal year that ends in September, but the funds were not released. Scandals hit the handling of the $20 million appropriated for the previous fiscal year, the Obama administration took months before it appointed a new USAID chief, and then it launched a review of the programs' effectiveness. ...more
2013-04-22 / The Miami Herald
Cuba saw a record number of “politically motivated and at times violent short-term detentions” during 2012, according to the U.S. State Department’s “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” which was released Friday...more
2013-04-18 / The Washington Post
Members of Cuba’s Ladies in White opposition group will finally pick up Europe’s top human rights prize from 2005 in person next week in Belgium, the European Union and the daughter of the group’s former leader said Wednesday...more
2013-04-16 / The Washington Post
Cubans were relieved Monday by the announcement that the late leader Hugo Chavez’s hand-picked successor had been elected Venezuela’s new president, apparently allowing their country to dodge a threatened cutoff of billions of dollars in subsidized oil...more
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