(AFP) – Mar 18, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The administration of US President Barack Obama called Wednesday on Cuba to free political prisoners immediately and to improve human rights on the communist-ruled island.

The State Department issued the appeal on the sixth anniversary of the Castro government's crackdown on 75 civil society activists known as the "Black Spring."

During his presidential campaign, Obama offered to engage the leadership in Havana -- with which the United States has had strained and limited ties for decades -- if it made political changes, such as freeing dissidents.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said 75 journalists, human rights monitors, librarians and others were jailed from 14 to 30 years for their "nonviolent advocacy" of political, social, and economic reforms in Cuba.

Fifty-five of them "remain in prison, many of them under harsh conditions," according to a statement Wood read at the daily media briefing.

"We call upon the Cuban government to immediately release these and other political prisoners being held in Cuban jails and to undertake measures to improve human rights conditions in Cuba," Wood said.

In its latest human rights report, the State Department said there were at least 205 political prisoners and detainees in Cuba by the end of 2008 and that Cuba still denied its citizens basic human rights like freedom of speech.

It also reported beatings and abuse of detainees and prisoners, including human rights activists as well as "harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, including denial of medical care."

During a visit to Washington on Saturday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil told Obama that the United States should improve ties with Cuba and other leftist regional foes Venezuela and Bolivia.

Obama has said he supports easing some US travel restrictions, and allowing greater cash remittances from relatives working in the United States to loved ones on the island of 11 million people.

However, he has resisted calls to lift the US embargo in place since 1962.

On March 10, the US Congress approved the lifting of some restrictions on travel to Cuba, as well as on the sale of medicines and food to the Communist-ruled island, reversing a policy by the preceding administration of president George W. Bush.

But Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the impact of the new rules would be negligible.

Fidel Castro, Cuba's ailing 82-year-old revolutionary leader, officially resigned as president on February 19 last year and handed power to his younger brother Raul, 77.

In January, Raul Castro said he was ready to speak directly with Obama, as long as the meeting was one of equals.

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