Numbers clarified
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Editor,
I would like to thank Caleb and the Valley Journal for the nice report on the recent Big Arm Association program on Cuba (VJ Feb 1, 2017).
I want to clarify the statement “Political detentions have continued although they are on the decline....”. Caleb got the numbers right from my presentation, however I failed to make it clear that the 2,500 number was only for the first two months of 2016.
I searched to find a current number for 2016 and found (from Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org) that from January through August there were 7,900 detentions, “representing the highest monthly average of detentions in the past six years.” Extrapolating this to a full year yields 11,850 vs. 8,600 for 2015.
Thus political detentions in Cuba continue, and are on the rise.
Tom Eddy
Big Arm
