Martha Beatriz Roque Believes That The US Should “Straighten Out” The Normalization With Cuba

Martha Beatriz Roque Believes That The US Should “Straighten Out” The
Normalization With Cuba / EFE, 14ymedio
Posted on March 4, 2016

EFE/14ymedio, Miami, 4 March 2016 — The Cuban dissident Martha Beatriz
Roque told EFE on Friday in Miami that she would like to be received by
the US President, Barack Obama, to ask him to “straighten out” the
process of normalization of relations with Cuba.

In that process, “the only thing the Cuban government does is demand and
it has given very like in exchange,” said Roque, an economist condemned
to 20 years in prison in the 2003 “Black Spring” for violating the
“independence and territorial integrity of the State,” collaborating and
receiving resources from the United States, and trying to undermine the
principles of the Revolution.

Roque Cabello, who was born in 1945 and also has Spanish nationality,
arrived in Miami Thursday, on a permit granted by the Cuban government
that allows her to travel outside the country one time only.

The dissident, who saw her sister for the first time in 55 years this
Thursday, said that she would return to Cuba on 31 March and so will not
be there when Obama visits the island on 21st and 22nd, although she
would like to be able to speak with him before his trip to explain to
him her opinions about the process of normalizing relations announced at
the end of 2014.

“Not to be radical, I must say that the Cuban government has given very
little. It does only what is required to get the embargo lifted, return
Guantanamo, close Radio and Television Marti,” she said in a telephone
interview with EFE.

In her view, the United States should “straighten out” this, so that the
Cuban government offers something from its side.

Roque said it now is not the time to judge whether Obama was or was not
wrong about the agreement he reached with Cuban President Raul Castro to
end the antagonism between the two countries, which has already resulted
in a restoration of diplomatic relations.

She would like to be received by Obama before traveling to the island to
give him her views on the situation in the country and the changes
needed, as she did with the United States Secretary of State, John
Kerry, when he visited Cuba.

Roque, from the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, said that after this
“private trip” she will return to Cuba on March 31 and will be subject
to the parole conditions she received in 2004, unable to leave the
country again.

A large group of those convicted in the Black Spring Group of 75 left
Cuba under an agreement between the Cuban government, the Catholic
Church and the Spanish government in 2010. Of the 11 who remained in
Cuba, only seven have received permission to take one trip outside of
Cuba, and of these three are not going to travel, for various reasons,
according to Roque.

Source: Martha Beatriz Roque Believes That The US Should “Straighten
Out” The Normalization With Cuba / EFE, 14ymedio | Translating Cuba –
translatingcuba.com/martha-beatriz-roque-believes-that-the-us-should-straighten-out-the-normalization-with-cuba-efe-14ymedio/