Police break up dissident sit-in
Cuban police grabbed the human rights group Ladies in White and sent
them home after they tried to deliver a letter to officials in Havana
seeking release of their loved ones.
Posted on Tue, Apr. 22, 2008
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BY LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com
A group of Cuban women peacefully seeking the release from prison of
their loved ones Monday were picked up and dragged into buses by Cuban
police in Havana -- marking their second failed attempt to deliver a
letter with their plea to the Interior Minister.
The 10 women, members of Las Damas de Blanco or the Ladies in White,
caused a morning melee captured by international photographers in front
of the plaza.
''They were not beaten but they were mistreated,'' said Yolanda Huerga,
the Miami spokeswoman for the group and an original member who was on a
cellphone with one of the women dragged on the bus by female police
officers.
''Since they did not leave peacefully, their arms and legs are all black
and blue and bruised. They were manhandled. It was not peaceful what
they did to them,'' she said.
The women were lifted up as they lay, arms locked, on the ground.
Once loaded on the bus, they were driven home, something the state
police has done in the past.
For five years, the women, who dress all in white, have staged
demonstrations every Sunday challenging the government's crackdown and
jailing in 2003 of 75 dissident writers and independent journalists.
More than than 50 remain incarcerated.
Monday's incident began around 6 a.m. when the women asked to speak to
Minister Abelardo Colomé Ibarra. They had a copy of the letter for Cuban
President Raúl Castro, Huerga said.
''The women want to sit down and speak to the minister about their loved
ones, about their release,'' Huerga said. ``They were told by the main
security officer at the building that this was not the right time or
place for a meeting.''
The women then asked: ''So when is the right time, and place?,'' she said.
By 9 a.m. the women were on the ground, arms locked, and refusing to
leave. ''They started to yell: ``Libertad, Libertad,'' Huerga said. Then
the buses arrived.
Huerga said it's not unusual for authorities to drive the women home.
''I was there once when they did it,'' said Huerga, who left Cuba in
2005 with her husband, Manuel Vázquez Portal, who had been among the
dissidents arrested.
Every Sunday, the group holds a silent protest march down Havana's busy
Fifth Avenue, demanding the release of relatives jailed .
Monday's group consisted of five members: Berta Soler, Laura Pollan,
Dolia Leal, Alejandra Garcia and Noelia Pedraza. Five other women were
there to show support.
Cuba accuses the activists and other opposition members of working with
U.S. authorities to undermine the island's communist system, a charge
the dissidents and Washington deny.
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen called the incident a ``shameful episode.''
The Associated Press and Miami Herald staff writer Pablo Bachelet
contributed to this report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/504647.html
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