The Ladies in White movement emerged in 2003, following a wave of repression by the Cuban government that was called the black spring.
At least six Cuban dissidents from the Ladies in White citizen movement were arrested this Sunday after announcing that they were resuming their Sunday actions to request the release of political prisonersdissident groups denounced.
Cuban activists explained these events on social networks, which happened when the representatives of the Ladies in White left their headquarters in Havana, dressed in white and with flowers of the same color.
Among those arrested was Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White and wife of the prisoner Ángel Juan Moya, who was the one who first warned of the arrests.
Bárbara Farrat, mother of minor Jonathan Farrat, was also with them and was also arrested. awaiting trial for participating in the July 11 anti-government protests in Cuba.
Farrat has been especially active in networks denouncing her son’s situation and participating in actions with groups that follow the judicial processes of those who joined the largest protests in decades on the island.
The collective of Cuban jurists and journalists for Democracy raised the number of detained Ladies in White to six, adding to these two women the names of Lourdes Esquivel Vieyto, Gladys Capote Roque, Asunción Carrillo Hernández and Caridad María Burunate Gómez.
They indicated in an urgent petition to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances that at least two other activists were held for hours and later released. Some more cases were reported on social networks.
The Cuban authorities did not report these events for the moment, which the official media did not report either.
Request for the release of political prisoners
The Ladies in White announced this Friday that they were reactivating their protest actions on Sundays to demand the release of what they describe as political prisoners.
“Each Lady in White, wherever she is, has the moral and political commitment to support the relatives of political prisoners who act for the freedom of their loved one,” Soler wrote on Facebook.
Soler and other representatives of the Ladies in White they had denounced in the last hours actions of coercion and intimidation that they attributed to the State security forces.
The Ladies in White movement emerged in 2003, following a wave of repression by the Cuban government that was called the black spring. Two years later they won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament.
The EU and NGOs such as Human Right Watch and Amnesty International condemned that wave of arrests, calling them politicians. The Cuban authorities condemned them alleging that they attempted against national sovereignty on orders from the United States. (I)
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