Cuban rights march disrupted in Havana

Cuban rights march disrupted in Havana
Updated Friday, December 11, 2009 10:02 am TWN, By Andrea Rodriguez, AP

HAVANA -- Hundreds of government supporters shouted insults and
pro-Castro slogans at about 50 wives, mothers and other female relatives
of Cuban political prisoners as they marched Wednesday through a crowded
Havana neighborhood in the name of human rights.

There were no injuries among the "Women in White," a political
opposition group that holds small, silent marches along Fifth Avenue in
a wealthier part of the Cuban capital each Sunday after attending Roman
Catholic Mass. The women dress head-to-toe in white.

The demonstrations usually only go for a few blocks and rarely draw the
ire of supporters of Fidel and Raul Castro, nor do they generate much
support among the general population, who know little about the dissidents.

But this time, the group left from the central Havana apartment of Laura
Pollan, one of the organization's founders and the wife of Hector
Maceda, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for his political
views. They also marched for more than an hour.

Supporters of Cuba's communist government are especially edgy this week
given that Thursday marks International Human Rights Day, which annually
prompts the Women in White and other tiny dissident groups to stage marches.

On Wednesday, the women made their way through the streets carrying
copies of the universal declaration of human rights and occasionally
chanting "Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!"

A crowd followed behind yelling "Fidel! Fidel!" and "Down with worms!" ─
the latter a common slang for Cubans who head into exile in the United
States.

After the women returned to Pollan's home, which is filmed day and night
by a government camera mounted nearby and also often watched by state
agents in plainclothes stationed on nearby street corners, the
government supporters continued to shout insults while the women cowered
inside.

"For 50 years they've been violating our rights and those of our
husbands," Pollan said.

Pollan's group was formed after what Cuban dissidents call the "Black
Spring" in 2003.

With the world's attention focused on the start of the U.S.-led war in
Iraq, Cuba's government rounded up 75 leading political opposition
leaders, activists and independent journalists and sentenced them to
lengthy prison terms for allegedly conspiring with Washington to
undermine the island's political system.

Cuban rights march disrupted in Havana - The China Post (11 December 2009)
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/americas/2009/12/11/236059/Cuban-rights.htm