This communiqué appeared originally in Spanish on our sister blog on Monday 14 June 2010.

The government of Raúl Castro has released one of his approximately two hundred political prisoners, and has transferred other twelve to prisons closer to their places of residence. This is the tangible result of the dialog between the regime and the Catholic Church a month after it was announced.

If the releases were to continue at the same rate, they would take one and a half decades. This prospect is unacceptable, not only to us, but also to the great majority of the internal opposition, the Cuban diaspora and democratic nations. We can support any process that would result in the improvement of the conditions in which the political prisoners are kept, and “extra-penal licenses” [paroled release] for a few, but we will not allow these developments to replace or undermine the efforts toward the immediate and unconditional release of all of them.

This week is going to be decisive to determine the scope of Raúl Castro’s will to release more political prisoners. It is up to him to send an unequivocal sign of his intentions. Without substantial advance in the releases, and without a clear chart for their immediate future, our only choice will be to double the efforts of the #OZT I Accuse the Cuban government Campaign.

Our campaign has received more that 49,000 signatures claiming the immediate release of all political prisoners and respect for human rights in Cuba. Almost 2,000 of these signatures come from the island. Hundreds of others come from public figures that have offered their national and international reputations to back our cause. This is not the end of our efforts for the release of all Cuban political prisoners, but only the basis on which to continue fighting for it.

Next week we will announce the date and further details of the first delivery of the signatures.

UPDATE: This is being reposted to include six more names added by Masferrer to his initial post. The update was based on a Diario de Cuba article.
Marc Masferrer reports that:

Dissident Guillermo Fariñas's health has taken a turn for the worse probably caused by a bacterial infection. According to his wife, Clara Pérez Gómez, the independent journalist and opposition leader, complains of acute body aches and "does not even want to talk."

His family awaits the results of a blood culture, although they fear that it may come back positive for the very dangerous bacterium staphylococcus aureus. A couple of weeks ago, this bacterium caused him a severe infection that he attributed then to the unsanitary conditions at Arnaldo Milián Provincial Hospital, in Santa Clara, Cuba, in which he has been interned since March 11th.

Doctors at the hospital decided to stop intravenous feeding (water, sugars, amino acids, and other basic elements to ameliorate the consequences of his prolonged hunger strike) because of a very high fever. "Since Sunday morning, Fariñas has not received any sort of nourishment."

She added that this situation will definitely worsen the already precarious health of the dissident who refuses to abandon his hunger strike which began more than a month ago as protest for the death of another opposition activist: Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

Agenda for a Transition in Cuba, an organization to which Fariñas belongs, presented the government of Raúl Castro with a "humane" formula to end the crisis. It consists of a popular referendum so that Cubans can vote on the fate of all remaining political prisoners.

The regime, that calls Fariñas's hunger strike "blackmail", has not made any public declarations on the proposal. However, a day after it came to light, Security of State (Cuba's repressive political police) detained Rafael León Rodríguez, general coordinator of Agenda for a Transition in Cuba.