Even as it ceded the limelight briefly to Obama during his trip to Cuba, the Communist regime made a point of consistently affirming the limits of dissent, Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists writes for The Columbia Journalism Review:
Dissidents were roughed up and detained prior to and following Obama’s visit; the state media, which operates in accordance with Communist Party dictates, published identical headlines; Fidel Castro lashed out at Obama as soon as he departed the island; the Communist Party Congress, which ends today and will set the stage for transition from nearly six decades of rule by the Castro brothers, has been a particularly opaque affair, even by Cuban standards. Raúl Castro emphatically rejected new reforms during his opening speech, which only state media were invited to cover.
