Ladies in White warned to be still during Summit

FROM CUBA
Ladies in White warned to be still during Summit

Miriam Leiva

HAVANA, Cuba, September 12 (Miriam Leiva / www.cubanet.org) - Several of
the Ladies in White in Havana report they have been visited by
government representatives who warned them not to stage any public
activities during the Summit of the Non-Aligned Nations to meet this
week in Havana.

Others in the group who live elsewhere on the island said they had been
enjoined from traveling. One, Magaly Broche, who lives in Camajuaní,
said authorities prevented her from traveling to neighboring Remedios to
visit a relative.

The Ladies in White is a group composed mostly of the wives and mothers
of political prisoners jailed in the Spring of 2003 who have been
holding quiet demonstrations since then.

The women, among them Berta Soler, Miriam Leiva, Laura Pollán, and Julia
Núñez, said they were visited by three women who said they were
Communist Party members, along with an executive of their local
Committee for the Defense of the Revolution who warned them not to plan
any public activities from September 9 to September 18. That is two days
before the Summit is to start and two days after it ends.

They said they would be allowed to walk along restricted routes near the
Summit venues, but singly and not as a group. The women said the
officials referred them to the guidelines published September 9 in the
official daily Granma, which basically stipulated that the airport, Old
Havana, the Convention Center, the areas where hotels are concentrated,
and a number of major thoroughfares are restricted areas in so far as
allowed activities are concerned.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/sep06/18e4.htm