Cuba's Ladies in White warned public protests no longer allowed
The women said that state security told them that they can attend mass
in Havana, but cannot march outside. The action comes a week before Pope
Benedict XVI arrives for three-day visit.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
Cuba's Ladies in White say the secret police have told them that they
will shut down the only public protests allowed by the government
anywhere on the island — the marches staged by the women after Sunday
masses in Havana's Santa Rita church.
The threat came as police arrested more than 70 group members over the
weekend and dissidents stepped up their activities as Cuba prepares for
Pope Benedict XVI's three-day visit to Havana and the eastern city of
Santiago de Cuba, starting Monday.
The Ladies in White have been generally allowed to protest outside the
Santa Rita church since mid-2010, when Cardinal Jaime Ortega interceded
with the government after the women were accosted, sometimes lewdly,
several times by mobs of government supporters.
Their Sunday marches after mass at Santa Rita, where many churchgoers
are foreign residents of Havana, along the grassy median of Fifth Avenue
in the western neighborhood of Miramar have been the only such regularly
occurring protest in Cuba.
Police have cracked down harshly, however, when women tried to launch
similarly peaceful marches elsewhere, including the cathedral in the
city of Santiago de Cuba and the Basilica of Our Lady of Charity in El
Cobre, both in eastern Cuba.
The Ladies in White was started by the wives, daughters and mothers of
75 dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown known as Cuba's "Black Spring."
The last still in prison were freed last spring, but all except 12 went
directly from prison to exile in Spain, with their female relatives.
"They told us that our dear ones are no longer in prison, so this small
space will no longer be permitted," group leader Berta Soler said of the
Santa Rita protests. Her husband, Angel Moya, was among the dozen
political prisoners who were freed and stayed on the island.
Soler said the top State Security officer in charge of watching the
Ladies in White, a man who only identifies himself as Alejandro, gave
the same message Saturday to her and members Alejandrina García and
Laura Maria Labrado, daughter of the group's late founder, Laura Pollán.
"We were told that we were given the opportunity to march because we
were a humanitarian group, but that now they are not going to tolerate
this anymore," Soler told El Nuevo Herald by phone from her Havana home.
Labrado and García confirmed her account.
The women said they understood that they would still be allowed to
attend the Sunday mass at Santa Rita, dressed in their usual white
clothes and carrying gladiolas, even though virtually all the Ladies in
White that tried to gather this weekend at the church were detained.
Many were punched and handled roughly as police loaded them aboard
government buses, and one 70-year-old woman was kicked, Soler said,
adding that she was still sore from the way she was shoved aboard the bus.
Soler said she and 17 other women were detained Saturday when they left
the Ladies in White headquarters — Pollán's house in downtown Havana –
to mark the anniversary of the 2003 crackdown. They wore paper masks of
Pollán, who died last year, and were freed after several hours.
Soler and another 31 women detained again Sunday as they tried to go
from Pollán's house to the Santa Rita church. The women who live in the
provinces were transferred to other buses and driven to their hometowns.
Another 22 group members went from their own homes to the Santa Rita
church and staged a brief protest outside afterward, but were swiftly
arrested and carted away on buses when they tried to break away from
their usual course, Labrado said.
Still detained as of Monday evening were two women and Moya, who was
freed last spring after serving about eight years in prison. He was
arrested near one of the women's groups.
A spokesman for the White House's National Security Council said Monday
that the round of detentions on the eve of Benedict's visit "underscores
the disdain of Cuban authorities for the universal rights of the Cuban
people."
"The quiet dignity of the (Ladies in White) stands in stark contrast
with the acts of those who are standing in the way of the basic
aspirations of the Cuban people," added spokesman Tommy Vietor.
"President Obama and the American people remain steadfast in standing
with the (women) and other courageous voices in Cuban civil society who
demonstrate the Cuban people's desire to freely determine their
country's future."
Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen issued a statement Monday
charging that "the tyranny's deliberate targeting of innocent and
non-violent women, like the Ladies in White, is shameful and reaffirms
the brutal nature of the regime."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/19/2702661/cubas-ladies-in-white-warned-public.html
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