Orlando Gutiérrez, president of the Cuban Democratic Directorate NGO, told reporters at an event in Miami that his organisation did not support the state visit.
Almost 1,500 arrests in a month
In January, the Spain-based Cuban Observatory of Human Rights recorded 1,474 arbitrary arrests in Cuba.
According to statistics collected since 2010 by the Havana-based Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, this was the highest monthly figure since their records began.
Activists from within Cuba as well as exiles spoke at the February 27 event held by the Presidio Político Histórico Cubano.
One of the guests was Berta Soler Fernández, the leader of the Ladies in White, a pacifist group campaigning for human rights on the island.
Major step in normalisation
Other Cubans who travelled to Miami for the event included Antonio Rodiles, project coordinator of State of Sats and a prominent critic of the US-Cuba détente, as well as Jorge Luis Pérez Antúnez, general secretary of the Civic Resistance Front.
Gorki Águila, the frontman of famed Cuban rock band Porno para Ricardo, and independent journalist and blogger Yuri Valle Roca were also there.
Exiles who attended the briefing included Santiago Álvarez, the president of the Legal Rescue Foundation, and Luis Felipe Rojas from the Democracy Movement.
The Cuban opposition has been divided on the issue of dialogue between Havana and Washington ever since the detente was announced in December 2014.
Obama will be the first US president to visit Cuba in 88 years and his trip is seen as a major step in the normalisation of bilateral relations.
Ernesto García Díaz is a journalist for the digital news portal Cubanet News, and an intern with IWPR.
