Cuban dissidents report arrests at peaceful march

Cuban dissidents report arrests at peaceful march
MENAFN - EFE News Services - Sunday, December 04, 2011

Havana, Dec 4, 2011 (EFE via COMTEX) -- About 50 Cuban opposition
members were harassed and arrested when they began a march on Friday
through the streets of the eastern city of Palma Soriano, relatives of
some of the protesters and people within the internal dissidence
movement told Efe on the weekend.
According to Berta Soler, the spokesperson for the Ladies in White
dissident group, about 50 opposition members were arrested on Saturday,
among them her husband Angel Moya and Jose Daniel Ferrer, both former
prisoners in the "Group of 75."
Soler said that 31 demonstrators were still under arrest and, according
to the version received from some of the 19 who had already been freed,
they were trying on Friday to reactivate the peaceful "Boitel-Zapata
lives" march when they were taken into custody.
"They left the house in which they had gathered and had walked along
just one street when they were violently repressed by a rapid response
brigade (a group of pro-government supporters) and arrested by the
police," she said.
"We hold the Cuban government accountable for the physical integrity of
these men because these people have the right to move about freely,"
said Soler, adding that she demanded "the necessary medical attention
for all those who need it."
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Cuban Human Rights and National
Reconciliation Commission, or CCDHRN, Elizardo Sanchez, said that
opposition sources told him that "there has been much political
repression on the first and second of this month in the eastern
provinces of Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba."
The human rights activist said that in Palma Soriano, in Santiago de
Cuba province, there had been 52 arrests and in Guantanamo at least 35,
the latter people being members of the Resistance and Democracy Movement
opposition group.
"Some have already been released and the forecast is that they will be
temporary arrests and they will free all of them,"Sanchez said.
Nevertheless, he expressed "concern at the high number of arrests for
political reasons that have occurred in just 48 hours"and the
"deliberate violence" of the police in repressing the demonstrators.
The Cuban government considers the dissidents and the internal
opposition to be "counterrevolutionaries and mercenaries paid" by the
United States.

EFE
rmo/bp

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