Cuba police detain 30 women at Havana protest

[cali]

Source: BBC


A member of the Ladies in White is pushed onto a government bus (17 March 2010)
The Ladies in White had been staging protests every day this week

Cuban police have arrested the wives and mothers of political dissidents at a demonstration in the capital, Havana.

About 30 members of the "Ladies in White" were stopped as they marched alongside the mother of a prisoner who died last month after a hunger strike.

They were demanding the release of some 50 government critics who are still being held after mass arrests in 2003.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first Cuban activist to starve himself to death in protest in nearly 40 years.

<snip>



Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8573447.stm

[naaman fletcher]

1. Fascist agitators.

Castro would never do that unless they were fascist agitators, paid by the U.S. Therefore that is what they are.

[RedCloud]

2. What's eating Raúl?

[bemildred]

3. Sounds like the police were trying to protect the ladies.

---

The women were heckled by hundreds of government supporters as they left a church in the Parraga neighbourhood with Reyna Luisa Tamayo, who alleges that her son was tortured in jail and that his death amounted to premeditated murder.

Police officers and interior ministry agents later asked the women to end their march and take shelter in two government buses. After they repeatedly refused, several female officers moved in and put them onto the buses by force.

You know what this reminds me of is when I was in high school and we had a couple kids that were avowed "communists", and they were subjects of more of less constant abuse for that, only the whole thing turned around the other way, with the anti-communists the abused minority.

Nevertheless it seems to be the case that BBC has no trouble getting this news out of Cuba. Some police state.

[warm regards]

4. If you can't come and go as you please, it is a police state.

Just ask these guys...

http://www.cubanball.com/defect.html

[bemildred]

5. Then most countries are police states.

It's been that way for some time now.

[warm regards]

6. Really...? I had no problems when I traveled to Europe during the holidays.

[bemildred]

7. Did you have to get permission to come and go?

Have you tried to enter the USA lately? Or did you just wander from country to country without anybody noticing?

[warm regards]

8. No, I just had to had to prove who I was. And if I wanted to leave permanently

I would not have to defect, i.e., escape slavery in order to do so.

[bemildred]

9. But you would not be fleeing from legal process would you?

Fleeing from the law is not unique to Cuba you know. There are people that come and go from Cuba when they like, with permission of course, but they don't piss off the Cuban government, just like anywhere else. Places where you can wander in and out while pissing off the government are called "failed states". The first thing a government does is regulate who can come in and go out.

[JackRiddler]

12. What do you think would happen if the US announced green cards for Mexican "defectors"?

[ngant17]

10. when I travelled to Europe

I saw lots of security and police, especially crossing borders. Passports are checked on a regular basis. And there is still crime no matter how many police are around. Gypsies are the usual problem.

When I traveled to Cuba, my biggest problem was that there were no police around when you needed them. My friend had her purse snatched in Miramar, in broad daylight, and earlier I was pestered by jinateras while on the train from Havana to Ciego de Avila, it was so brazen that that I had to exit in Camaguey early on the route just to get away from them.

The problem is that the US severely restricts the number of legal visas for Cubans to enter, and at the same time it encourages illegal immigration from Cuba to S. Florida due to nonsense policies that entice Cubans to try to float across the straights on homemade boats or rafts. A Cuban who uses the legal process to enter the US will spend close to thousand dollars or more for assorted paperwork which might require several years to complete, while the Cubans who choose illegal entry will get a jump start on the entire process and may not have to spend a nickel to do it.

[Socal31]

11. Nothing to see here folks, move along.