Ladies in White: Act of Repudiation and Violent Arrests After Sunday March / Katia Sonia

Circled in red: State Security Official called "Reinier"

The “Laura Pollan” Ladies in White movement suffered another violent act of repudiation and arrests at 3rd Avenue and 26th Street in the Miramar district, at the end of their march demanding freedom, at noon on Sunday, December 11. The act was orchestrated by women undercover police officers in civilian clothes, who also summoned drunken men armed with knives.

After the march and after sharing the reading of various documents in the park connected to the church of Santa Rita, we were ready to take the bus. Then we were surrounded by patrol cars who stopped traffic. Groups of police in plain clothes who had been waiting since early on, hidden around the church, launched a rally against us. We saw men carrying knives, we sat on the ground and kept shouting Freedom!

Then, by order of State Security, they began to charge us and violently force us inside buses with closed the windows to prevent our demands being heard. Then we were taken, escorted by a fleet of cars of state security, patrol cars, ambulances, etc, to a military unit on the outskirts of Havana to the east.

Then we were transported — one by one — with an escort of two officers of state security to different police stations, according to our residences, until finally we were released — from patrol cars — in the vicinity of our homes.

The Ladies in White from interior of the country were classified by the officer Alejandro according to their place of origin and then put on buses independently, with police escorts. Finally, they were deported from the capital.

Many of our phones were reformatted and we lost our information.

The act of repudiation was directed by Pedro Chavez, interrogator at State Security’s Villa Marista headquarters.

Katia Sonia Martín Véliz

December 13 2011