EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, November 21, 2023 — The leader of the Cuban women’s opposition movement Damas de Blanco [Ladies in White], Berta Soler, denounced on Monday the arrest of at least 12 members of her group, a day before and in different parts of the country, to prevent their attendance at the religious service in Catholic temples.
Soler warned from her social networks that several of her colleagues were temporarily detained in police stations in the towns of Colón, Unión de Reues and Cárdenas, all in the province of Matanzas, and another n the Havana neighborhood of Calabazar, who was held for two hours inside a patrol car.
This was the 67th Sunday since, in 2022, the Ladies in White began to report acts of repression against them when they leave their homes with the intention of going to church.
Members of the organization have been arrested almost every Sunday since – in January 2022 – they decided to march again, after a pause due to the pandemic, to demand the release of those arrested in the protests of 11 July 2021 and other political prisoners.
The Ladies in White movement emerged in 2003 on the initiative of a group of women relatives of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists who were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences during the Black Spring.
In 2005, the Ladies in White received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Conscience from the European Parliament.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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