Leader of Dissident Group 'Ladies In White' Uses Trip To Denounce Cuba's Regime

Leader of Dissident Group 'Ladies In White' Uses Trip To Denounce Cuba's
Regime
By Elizabeth Llorente
Published April 30, 2013
Fox News Latino

Berta Soler doesn't know what awaits her when she returns to her native
Cuba once her tourist visa expires in about a month.

One of that country's leading dissidents, Soler has traveled around
Europe, where she received the Sakharov Prize, the highest human rights
honor there, and now is making stops all around the United States,
calling for an end to the Castro regime in Cuba.

Soler, 49, is the founder of Ladies in White. She is one of several
high-profile dissidents who are traveling outside of Cuba under a new
relaxing of restrictions by Cuban President Raúl Castro this year.

Many of the dissidents, unencumbered by the obstacles in Cuba to getting
word out about oppression on the island, have held press conferences and
spoken at forums to highlight human rights violations.

But what, if anything, will await them upon their return for their
anti-government criticism, no one knows.

"I'm not afraid," Soler said. "In Cuba there's no liberty, but I still
exercise my freedom of expression. I denounce the Cuban regime when I'm
inside Cuba. When I'm outside, in a free country, I speak the truth
about political prisoners, the reality of my country, the struggles for
human rights, of the Ladies in White, and I denounce the Castro government."

"When I go back, my love of my country is stronger than any fear of
prison bars," she said.

Until 10 years ago, Berta Soler stayed away from politics, feeling
perfectly content to leave the activism to her husband, Angel Moya, an
outspoken critic of the Fidel Castro regime.

But it all changed in 2003, when the Castro regime launched a crackdown
on its critics, rounding up 75 dissidents, including Moya, and
sentencing them to long jail terms.

That's when Soler, the activist, was born. She helped bring together
wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the political prisoners, and
led the women in marches every Sunday, demanding the release of their
male relatives.

Notably, they wore white, and carried white flowers – a symbol of peace,
and the impetus for their name, the Ladies in White.

"I was [another] kind of woman before my husband was arrested and
jailed, a woman who stayed out of the spotlight, who didn't participate
in anything political," she said in an interview with Fox New Latino.

"When my husband came out of jail, eight years later, he found me to be
a totally different woman. I was a fighter, a voice for human rights,
for the end of oppression, an end to the rule by Fidel and Raul Castro."

Her husband had wanted to travel with her, but his visa request was
denied, Soler said.

The Ladies in White founder is telling anyone who'll listen during her
travels that Raúl Castro's easing of restrictions on Cubans visiting
places outside the island does not translate into true democratic reform.

"It's cosmetic," Soler said. "They know how to exude one thing to the
world, but in Cuba the restricted freedoms remain the same."

On Monday night, Cuban exiles in Hudson County, New Jersey – a longtime
Cuban-American hub – held a reception for Soler. They took her to a
building that houses an organization of Cuban former political prisoners
and showed her a wall filled with framed photographs of Cuban dissidents
they say were executed by Fidel Castro's firing squads.

Soler vowed to the exiles that she would continue to fight for liberty
in Cuba.

Dissidents like Soler, as well as Cuba's best known dissident blogger,
Yoani Sanchez – who also received Cuba's permission to travel abroad–
have moved to the forefront of the fight for democratic reform in the
island, a fight whose public face was once that of the Cuban exile.

"For many years we thought we had to lead the change in Cuba," said
Remberto Perez, vice president of the Cuban American National
Foundation, an influential lobby group. "We thought we in exile were
going to be the ones responsible for generating change in government."

But eventually it grew apparent that change had to come from within
Cuba, he said, something that grew easier with the Internet, and the
ability of dissidents to send their messages around the world.

"Ladies in White have been an inspiration for us, a validation for the
struggle we have had outside of Cuba," Perez said.

Elizabeth Llorente can be reached elizabeth.llorente@foxnewslatino.com

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2013/04/30/leader-dissident-group-ladies-in-white-uses-trip-to-denounce-cuba-regime/