The 'Damas de Blanco,' a group of Cuban women seeking the release of
political prisoners, held a protest in front of Raúl Castro's office Monday.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the April 22, 2008 edition
Havana, Cuba - – When Laura Pollán's husband, a journalist, hosted his
colleagues at their house in Havana, she busied herself in the kitchen
making coffee. When their talk turned "too political," she left.
But since his imprisonment, the former high school teacher is now at the
center of discussions, prayers, fasting – and a rare, impromptu street
protest Monday. Ms. Pollán is a leader of the "Damas de Blanco" (Ladies
in White), a group of wives, mothers, and sisters of 75 dissidents, many
of them reporters, jailed after a sudden sweep of arrests nationwide in
March 2003.
On Monday morning, Pollán and nine other Damas were roughed up by a mob
and arrested near the offices of President Raúl Castro. "We are here to
demand the release of our husbands and won't leave until they are free
or they arrest us. We have waited long enough, we want to talk to the
new president," Pollán said, according to Reuters.
Moments later, a bus pulled up and about 20 female corrections officers
tried to arrest the women, who sat on the sidewalk, clasped arms, and
refused to move. A mob of about 100 Cuban government supporters, mainly
women from nearby government buildings, joined the fray, picking the
Damas up, throwing them into the waiting bus, and yelling insults,
Reuters reported.
Monday's protest was unusual. It may, as Pollán suggested in a recent
interview here, reflect a broad, emerging expectation of loosening
political restrictions in the one-party Socialist state.
Raúl Castro officially became Cuba's first new president in nearly 50
years in February, when he took over for his ailing brother Fidel
Castro. Raúl has recently dropped restrictions on ownership of computers
and cellphones, among other changes. Some here and abroad have expressed
the hope he would go beyond granting access to consumer goods and
services. But the government response to the Damas protest Monday may be
designed to tamp down such expectations.
Certainly, the Damas have been the only tolerated expression of
opposition for some time. Each Sunday, the Damas take to Havana's
streets in a 10-block march that starts at Santa Rita de Casia Church
and ends at a nearby park. Easily recognized by the all-white clothes
they wear, the faces of their brothers and uncles worn as pins on their
blouses, they seek the immediate release of their relatives, whom they
say were given unfair trials and detained on false charges.
Observers say these women represent the only systematic, peaceful civil
disobedience taking place today in Cuba. They have received global
attention and won international accolades, and in doing so undergone a
personal transformation that Pollán says she didn't know was within her.
"I started fighting for my husband, then for the group, and now it's for
changes for the better of the country," says Pollán in an interview in
her house. "We found qualities in ourselves we did not know we had."
The arrests of Pollán's husband, Héctor Maseda, along with 74 others,
took place in a three-day period in 2003, known here as "Black Spring."
Human rights activists say that their trials were cobbled together a few
weeks later; Mr. Maseda only met his lawyer 15 minutes before the
proceeding began. They were dubbed "mercenaries" of the US – because
they published in foreign media outlets – and some were given sentences
of nearly three decades.
Having nowhere else to turn, the Damas formed almost immediately, and
since then they have never missed a Sunday march, including braving
three cyclones. They have also been joined by Cubans who were not
directly affected by "Black Spring." They have been compared to other
women's groups like Argentina's "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo," who
protest for the children who were disappeared during that country's
"dirty war."
The group always walks with gladioluses in their hands, wearing white to
represent the innocence, they say, of their family members – and taking
over streets that the government has always maintained belong to
revolutionaries. But with their protests – including letters written to
state officials and demands for airtime on state-owned television – many
see them as today's revolutionaries, the ones trying to change the
system. "Their courage is remarkable," says Carlos Serpa Maceira, an
independent journalist in Havana, who has documented in photos the
harassment of the group by those who consider them
"counterrevolutionaries." Many Damas are heckled on the streets. Some
have lost their jobs.
In 2005, the Damas won the European Union's Sakharov Prize for Freedom
of Thought, among its most prestigious human rights awards. The New
York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, upon the fifth anniversary
of "Black Spring," recently called for the immediate release of the
jailed journalists. They have helped garner condemnation around the
world, including among left-leaning artists and writers and nations who
typically defend Cuba.
"Black Spring" was not the first time Pollán's husband had gotten into
trouble. He'd been detained for a day, sometimes two, once for a week.
But when Pollán returned from work on March 19, 2003, she found 12 state
agents standing in her ransacked home. Authorities confiscated two
1950s-era typewriters and news clippings in which Maseda had underlined
comments made by public officials. Pollán says it was his effort to
detect contradictions in the national polemic. He was given 20 years for
threatening the "sovereignty" of the state.
Yet Hugo Landa, the director of CubaNet, a Miami-based outlet that
receives reports from about 40 writers in Cuba, says that "Black Spring"
has not curtailed journalism. In fact, Mr. Landa says, it has given more
impetus to the trade. Many, like Mr. Serpa Maceira, wake up in the
middle of the night, and without access to affordable Internet, they
write their stories out longhand in notebooks and type them on computers
at various embassies.
"They sent these independent journalists to jail to crush the
independent press," says Landa. "But by doing that, they sent such a
strong message of repression, that many more started to write."
But critics say they have little faith that real political change is
under way, as long as freedom of expression is restrained.
On April 16, an article called "There will be no space for subversion in
Cuba," appeared on the website of Cuba's state newspaper, Granma, and
left no room for doubt about the government's view of political
opposition. "There is no space," it reads, "for adversaries, fifth
columnists, or internal mercenaries."
Jose Agramonte Leyva, a political dissident who spent three years in
jail as part of the independent library movement, says that the Raúl
Castro administration might have to find ways to justify imprisonment,
but that those who wish to speak outside the government line will be
just as much at risk and considered lackeys of the US – a label he disdains.
"I want to fight for justice here; until we have free elections we will
have no liberty," he says. "All I want is to sit at my table and eat a
piece of meat peacefully."
In the past five years, 20 of the 75 dissidents have been released from
jail. Pollán, who sometimes has 25 women sleeping in her home, says that
even though her husband remains in jail, she is hopeful.
On their fifth anniversary, when they marched for five consecutive days,
they handed out popcorn in bags with the number "55" written on them –
for those who are still behind bars. Not all accepted the gifts, but
most did – a move that might be meaningless in a more open society but
is telling in Cuba, she says.
"The more time passes, the worse it will be for the government," she
says, pointing to a tiny statue of Santa Rita on her bookshelf. She's
the saint of the "impossible," she says. "There is, every day, more
solidarity. One way or another, it is a slow awakening."
Find this article at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0422/p01s07-woam.html
No comments:
Post a Comment