4 May 2010 / REUTERS, HAVANA
Cuba’s dissident Ladies in White staged their weekly protest march without interference on Sunday after the Cuban government dropped its attempted clampdown on the group following intervention by the Catholic Church.
It was a rare victory for a Cuban opposition group and followed clumsy government efforts to shut down the women the previous two Sundays by bringing in government supporters to harass them for hours with chants and obscenities. As they have for seven years, the white-clad women emerged from mass at the Santa Rita de Casias Catholic Church and, with flowers in hand, marched silently along Fifth Avenue in Havana’s upscale Miramar neighborhood. There were no arrests. A scattering of Cubans looked on curiously as the 12 women walked along but in contrast to the past two weeks there were no crowds of people waiting to surround and harass them. The previous Sunday, a rough-looking group held the women at bay for seven hours, shouting in their faces and at times making sexually suggestive remarks and gestures. The women have been marching since a 2003 government crackdown in which 75 dissidents, including husbands and sons of the Ladies in White, were imprisoned. Most are still jailed. The marches have been the only known public protests permitted by authorities since the early 1960s.
