The United States is renewing calls for Cuba to release imprisoned U.S. contractor Alan Gross, who has served two years behind bars on state security charges. White House spokesman Jay Carney called for Havana to free the contractor immediately, saying it is "past time" for Gross to be allowed to

Laura Pollán, a human rights activist who founded the Ladies in White, a Cuba-based group of female relatives of political prisoners, was posthumously honored in mid-December by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Pollán, who died in October 2011, had been a high school teacher with no

Cuban state security police are now telling the Ladies in White not to attend Sunday mass. Recently, six Ladies in White, among them Sandra Guerra, Elizabeth Kawooya, and Dignora Figueredo, were called in and threatened at dawn on a Saturday by the political police in Havana and told not to attend

HAVANA - Laura Pollán, founder and leader of the Cuban dissident group Ladies in White, died October 14 in a local hospital after a brief illness. The cause of death was said to be cardiac arrest. Ms. Pollán was remembered at a service the next day with a simple altar in her home and vows that

HAVANA - In late September, an organized pro-government mob of around 300 people, along with State Security agents with loudspeakers that resonated speeches by Fidel Castro, and who were screaming slogans, insults, obscenities, and carrying flags and posters, surrounded the home of one of the

HAVANA - Though adamant that Cuba is simply fine-tuning socialism, not shifting to capitalism, President Raúl Castro has spearheaded changes that allow Cubans to work for themselves in 178 approved activities, hire employees and rent out rooms and cars. The Cuban leader has said the measures are

    Despite having released more than 20 journalists imprisoned during a 2003 crackdown, Cuban authorities continue to persecute independent journalists through arrests, beatings and intimidation, according to a new report released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In one

      Some 60 representatives of organized labor throughout the Americas recently participated in a two day conference in Miami to discuss recent drastic economic measures being imposed on the Cuban people by their Communist government. Also participating were representatives

CFTU’s Chair, Thomas R. Donahue, recently contacted U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, for help in gaining freedom for Macdiel Bachiller Pedroso, the 21-year-old son of a Cuban labor union official now living in exile. Pedroso has been imprisoned in Cuba for more than four years