HAVANA – Cuba’s internal opposition described as “excellent” Monday the news that U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to lift restrictions on Cuban Americans’ travel and remittances to the island.

Dissidents added that now the ball is in the court of Cuban President Raul Castro, demanding that he free political prisoners and eliminate the requirement that people wishing to travel abroad obtain exit visas.

“It looks like an excellent thing to me, very positive, one that the Cuban people will receive joyfully,” economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, one of the 75 dissidents jailed in the “Black Spring” of 2003 who is now free on a medical parole, told Efe.

Obama has ordered the State, Treasury and Commerce departments to start the process of ending the restrictions as soon as possible and to take measures to ease communications with Cuba, a senior U.S. official told Efe Monday.

The moves are accompanied by a call for the island’s communist government to not interfere with remittances or humanitarian shipments.

The idea behind the decisions made Monday, according to the official, is “to support the Cuban people’s desire to determine their own destiny.”

“I was expecting this because I consider him a man of honor and he had said that he was going to do it,” Espinosa said in reference to the decision of Obama, who promised during the election campaign that he would end restrictions on Cuban Americans with relatives on the island.

He added that “logic” dictates that Havana should respond with a position that is “softer, more flexible under these new circumstances,” although often Cuba has gone “against that.”

For Elizardo Sanchez, head of the unrecognized Cuban Commission on Human Rights, the step taken by Obama is the “chronicle of a decision foretold” that can “favor the process of normalizing bilateral relations.”

Sanchez believes that Obama’s decision now demands an “analogous” decision by Havana with the application of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on freedom of movement, so that Cubans can come and go “freely to and from the island.”

“There is room to hope for an at least symmetrical response from the Cuban government, although I confess my skepticism,” Sanchez said.

He added that the measures adopted in Washington and the announcements by Gen. Raul Castro on his readiness to establish a dialogue are still “timid steps” towards normalizing relations.

Miriam Leiva, founder of the Ladies in White group comprising relatives of the Group of 75, said that Obama’s decision “is very important” because “it eliminates an artificial separation of families and allows aid to the very needy here.”

Nonetheless, she said it is necessary for “Congress to allow Americans to travel freely to Cuba,” and not just those who have families on the island, “because that would establish a contact that would allow a very beneficial interchange.”

Bills currently before the Democratic-controlled Congress would eliminate restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba by all U.S. residents, but that legislation faces opposition from Cuban American lawmakers and some exile groups.

By the same token, though some members of Congress support lifting the 47-year-old U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, Obama says he will not consider such a move until there is democratic change on the island.

“I congratulate Obama on the step he has taken,” Hector Palacios, another paroled member of the Group of 75, told Efe, adding that it was Cuba’s turn to take the next step with the freeing of the roughly 200 political prisoners in the island’s jails.

Vladimiro Roca, of the Agenda for the Transition, said that Obama’s measure is “positive” and that the decision adopted in 2004 by the Bush administration to sharply restrict Cuban Americans’ travel and remittances to their homeland “harmed the people but not the Cuban government. EFE





Obama Ends Limits on Cuban Americans' Travel, Money to Cuba