The joy of the announcement Thursday evening that Cuban prisoner of conscience Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet was about to be released from jail, was tempered by the news that another dissident, Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina had been arrested.
That alone is significant because it illustrates that not withstanding the release of Biscet and dozens of other political prisoners in the past several months, repression is still a pillar of state policy in Cuba. Nothing has changed.
But Rodríguez's arrest at this moment, which was first reported via Twitter by Cuba independent journalist/blogger Luis Rojas, is alarming because his brother, political prisoner Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, is on a hunger strike that combined with the malignant actions of his jailers, has left him near death.
The best we can hope for is that Rolando was picked up because of his own anti-Castro activism and that it doesn't have anything to do with his brother.
But there is reason to fear — very little of Castro-style repression has do with coincidence — that Rolando was picked up in advance of an announcement about Néstor's fate.
Let's pray not.
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Read Luis Rojas' recent blog post about Néstor Rodríguez, here.
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