More Than 100 Arrests in Cuba on Human Rights Day Latin American Herald Tribune - EFE December 10, 2015
HAVANA – More than 100 dissidents were arrested around Cuba to prevent demonstrations on UN Human Rights Day.
The dissident group Ladies in White on Thursday called for different opposition groups to join together in the “We’re All Marching” initiative to stage a demonstration in downtown Havana, but only four women and one man from that group were able to get there, EFE learned.
Upon their arrival at the planned site of the protest, the several dissidents shouted “Long live human rights” and “Freedom for the Cuban people,” and they were immediately arrested by police as well as having insults such as “worms” and “mercenaries” hurled at them by government supports on the scene.
In addition, the government backers mobilized by the regime shouted slogans such as “Long live Fidel,” “Long live Raul” and “Long live the Revolution,” the first two referring to the Castro brothers.
Around the island, there were “between 150 and 200” arrests of dissidents, many of whom had been “besieged” in their homes for several days, activist Elizardo Sanchez, the leader of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, told EFE.
“Independent civil society is celebrating World Human Rights Day indoors,” said Sanchez, who mentioned the cases of the Patriotic Union of Cuba in Havana and the Ladies in White, who he said were being “monitored” by the political police.
On the street where the home that is the headquarters of the Ladies in White stands, in Havana’s Lawton neighborhood, starting early Thursday morning food vendors and musicians began to gather as part of an “operation” disguised to look like a street party but designed to short-circuit any demonstration by the dissidents.
The leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler; her husband, former political prisoner Angel Moya, and six other members of the group were arrested by police as they were heading to the protest site at a central point in the Velado neighborhood, dissident Martha Beatriz Roque said.
Independent journalists Yoani Sanchez and Reinaldo Escobar also complained that State Security agents were posted outside their home, from where they publish the dissident daily 14½, to “prevent the reporters from covering the gatherings for Human Rights Day.”
Amnesty International on Thursday said that the risk of harassment and arrests of Cuban activists on Human Rights Day amid a wave of nearly 1,500 recent arbitrary arrests on the island is a “systemic problem.”
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