Saturday, December 10, 2011

Gov't supporters block Ladies in White march

Gov't supporters block Ladies in White march
Updated Sunday, December 11, 2011 0:09 am TWN, By Jack Kimball ,Reuters

HAVANA -- Dozens of slogan-chanting Cuban government supporters faced
off with dissident women on Friday and prevented them from marching in
the street on the eve of international Human Rights Day.

About 200 backers of Cuba's communist government crowded a street in
central Havana where 20 women of the Ladies in White dissident group had
assembled in a house.

They carried signs of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and yelled
pro-government and anti-U.S. slogans.

"They're mercenaries," government supporter Elvira Gonzalez said of the
dissident women, who had planned a march to demand the release of
political prisoners.

Cuba's government routinely calls the island's dissidents "mercenaries"
and claims they are on the payroll of its long-time ideological foe, the
United States.

The Ladies in White group was formed by the wives and mothers of 75
dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown on Castro's opponents. The women
dressed in white to march silently along Havana streets seeking the
release of the prisoners.

The women were expected to try to march again on Saturday, the
anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.

All 75 Cubans jailed in Havana's so-called Black Spring of 2003 have
been freed, most of them following a deal between the Catholic Church
and President Raul Castro in 2010.

Dissident protests are regularly confronted by hostile mobs backing the
government, which says the free education and health services it
provides show its respect for human rights.

"There are no human rights here. They don't respect them," said Ladies
in White leader Berta Soler. "We can't go out to walk on the streets of
Havana because the government has these mobs and they won't let us
pass," she said.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/americas/2011/12/11/325528/Govt-supporters.htm

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