Setting Cuba free with Rosa Maria Paya

Few countries on earth are as politically and economically repressed as Cuba. For all its brutality and illiberalism of six decades of one-party rule, the communist regime has somehow managed to sell an image of itself as a brave holdout against Western imperialists, rather than a despotic economic basket case, allied to the world's very worst regimes, including Putin's Russia.Our guest this week, Rosa Maria Paya is the scion of what she describes as a 'family of dissidents' on the Caribbean island. Her late father Oswaldo was a prominent human rights activist who won the Sakharov Prize and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Rosa Maria has continued his work by founding Cuba Decide, a grassroots initiative campaigning for democracy and rule of law on the island.Our editor John Ashmore caught up with Rosa Maria on her recent trip to the UK, where she came to Parliament to speak about the plight of Cuban political prisoners and to urge the British government to introduce further sanctions against the communist regime. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.