The big spin on the latest report on political repression in Cuba is this: The number of politically motivated arrests -- at least 652 -- is the lowest monthly count since August 2013, suggesting maybe, just maybe a change is a coming to Cuba.
But before you go nominating Raul Castro for the Nobel Peace Prize, consider this:
-- The 652 arrests reported by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation is almost three times as many as the 233 arrests recorded in July 2013, and the highest July count since at least 2010. That suggests nothing has substantially changed about the upward trend in repression seen up to now in 2014.
-- The 652 arrests in July bring the count for 2014 to 6,556, surpassing the 6,424 recorded in all of 2013 and almost breaking the record of 6,602 set in 2012.
-- Maybe Castro's secret policemen like to take it slower in the midsummer. The 233 arrests recorded in July 2013 was the second-lowest monthly count that year. The next month, it more than doubled to 547.
-- The montlhly count may have been down in July, but there were at least 111 physical attacks on dissidents because of their politics.
Look closesly at the numbers, and there is nothing to suggest that the count in one month that something is changing in Cuba. Repression is as rampant as ever.
Get details on each arrest in July, here.
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