ReutersBy Jack Kimball and Nelson Acosta | Reuters
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban dissidents said on Saturday that about 200
people were temporarily detained by the Communist-run island's security
services in the days leading up to an international human rights
celebration.
Government supporters danced salsa and chanted political slogans in a
Havana square to mark the 63rd anniversary of the adoption of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.
Opposition members who had planned to celebrate Human Rights Day in the
same place, and protest against abuses in Cuba, were blocked from going
to the square, dissidents said.
"Some 200 detentions for political motives have taken plan in the last
nine days in the lead up to the international Human Rights Day," said
Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights said.
"Authorities use a tactic of short-duration arrests, who are released a
few hours or days later, to impede protests."
International rights groups say Cuban laws virtually prevent all forms
of protest and dissent while the government says the free education and
health services it provides show its respect for human rights.
On Friday, government backers blocked the dissident group Ladies in
White from marching in the street.
The women were heckled again on Saturday by a crowd of government
supporters and prevented from leaving a house were they had gathered in
central Havana.
"Here come the people to fight for what is ours. These streets are ours
and that's why we defend them," shouted government sympathizer Mirta
Sosa outside the house.
"The government has prevented us from exercising the right of free
movement in the streets. Here in Cuba, human rights are violated daily,"
said Ladies in White leader Berta Soler.
The Ladies in White group was formed by the wives and mothers of 75
dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown on Castro's opponents. They have
since been released by President Raul Castro's government.
Havana's "Black Spring of 2003" caused a major fallout between Cuba and
the international community, and while some European nations have begun
a rapprochement since the prisoner release, relations with long-time
ideological foe the United States remain in a deep freeze.
Opposition protests in Cuba are exceedingly rare. Cuba's government,
which came to power in a 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro, accuses
dissidents of being on the payroll of the Washington, which has imposed
a trade embargo on the island since Castro embraced Soviet communism in
the early 1960s.
On Saturday, state media was filled with stories and commentaries for
the anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in 1948.
"The fulfillment of international commitments ... has been implicit in
the work of the Cuban Revolution despite the economic war ... and also
the systematic plots to destroy it," Jose Luis Mendez Mendez, an analyst
at the research arm of the Interior Ministry, wrote in an opinion piece
on cubadebate.cu.
(Additional reporting by Reuters TV; editing by Anthony Boadle)
http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-dissidents-200-detained-u-n-rights-day-170003989.html
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