The European Union's special representative for human rights will visit Cuba in November, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Friday in Havana after holding talks with Cuban authorities.
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I am pleased to announce (...) the visit (to Cuba) of the European Union Special Representative for Human Rights Eamon Gilmore," Borrell said, after the third EU-Cuba Joint Council held on Friday as part of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement signed in 2016 between the island and the European bloc. In front of the press, Josep Borrell indicated that Havana and Brussels will open at the end of November "a very important dialogue on the subject" of human rights, in which Eamon Gilmore will participate.
He also said he had discussed with the Cuban authorities "the situation created before, during and after the demonstrations and arrests of July 2021" and that this subject would be taken up by Eamon Gilmore on the occasion of his next visit. On July 11, 2021, thousands of Cubans demonstrated their anger in the streets of the island to shouts of "Freedom" and "We are hungry." According to the authorities' latest count, nearly 500 protesters have been sentenced, some up to 25 years in prison. The off-island human rights NGO 11J estimates that 768 people remain in prison. On Monday, eight NGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, sent a letter to Josep Borrell asking him to make the issue of human rights "at the centre of relations between the EU and Cuba".
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We talked about this and expressed our willingness to continue discussing it," said Borrell, who spoke with Cuban Justice Minister Oscar Silvera. Talks with President Miguel Díaz-Canel and former Cuban leader Raul Castro are also on the agenda.
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The EU has held many human rights dialogues with Cuba, but we don't see the results," dissident Marta Beatriz Roque said on Twitter. On the same social network, another dissident, Guillermo Fariñas, winner of the 2010 Sakharov Prize, asked Borrell "not to ask" the communist government for "trade concessions or investment facilities for European companies, at the price of violating the rights of Cuban citizens."