I have never denied that there were problems with human rights in Cuba. Respecting human rights is a problem for all countries in the world, including the United States and Canada. Even Canada was singled out by the Commission on Human Rights. No country is perfect, and that is why we are all working together to try and improve things. Having said that, the notion of political prisoner is not defined in any international covenant. The interpretation of political prisoner is subjective.
I will go back to the absurd example I gave earlier. If Canada were to arrest people funded by the Government of Iran, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia for having caused a transition from a peaceful democracy to an Islamic republic, how would we deal with those people? Many organizations that defend human rights would describe the people arrested using security certificates as political prisoners. Should other countries then put an end to their economic or government relations with Canada?
There are political prisoners in the United States. People are regularly arrested at demonstrations. In the United States, one prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, has been in prison for over 25 years for his opinions. He is on death row; he is facing the death penalty. None of these so-called political prisoners in Cuba are facing the death penalty. The only cases involving the death penalty in the past 10 years were due to the highjacking of a boat by terrorists, to something tantamount to what occurred on September 11. Indeed, we must determine whether or not these people are political prisoners. That issue is the subject of considerable media hype.
You talked about a plot. Unfortunately, it is not just on the TV series that you see the Government of the United States, the Pentagon, and the CIA put in place policies and wage a psychological war to take economic or political control of a country. Just look at what happened in Chili and in other countries.
The White House website talks about a plan to annex Cuba, which I referred to. The Government of the United States freed up $80 million last year to fund a campaign to tarnish Cuba's reputation and to defame it. It was discovered that Reporters Without Borders, which was long considered an independent and local organization, received money directly from those funds. That is unfortunately the current situation.