14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 5 DecemberThe leader of the Cuban dissident collective Damas de Blanco [Ladies in White], Berta Soler, was arrested this weekend along with the mothers of two prisoners for the massive protests of July 11, 2021 (11J), the regime opponent Ángel Moya reported on Monday.
Norabel Herrera and Marilin Cabrera managed to evade the repressive siege of State Security and join Soler, who has already been detained 32 times since she decided to resume her Sunday protests at the beginning of the year and with the release of those detained for 11J as the main reason.
Moya explained on his Facebook profile that his wife and leader of the Ladies in White was arrested, as is customary, when she was trying to leave the headquarters of her association in Havana on Sunday morning, together with Herrera and Cabrera.
Soler, who was fined 30 pesos, was released this morning, hours after the other two women were released, Moya said.
Since the 9/11 demonstrations, several people have been detained for protesting for the release of their relatives. Some members of the family of political prisoner Andy García, detained in Villa Clara, have been harassed and interrogated on several occasions by State Security this year.
In February, Yudinela Castro Pérez, mother of 18-year-old Rowland Castillo Castro, was arrested in Villa Marista, Havana, for demanding her son’s release. The same thing happened with Migdalia Gutiérrez Padrón, mother of one of the protesters from La Güinera, detained by the Police during the anniversary of 11J for wearing white.
Bárbara Farrat , mother of the young Jonathan Torres Farrat, only 17 years old, was imprisoned for several hours on December 24, 2021, for claiming that Cuban families should be together during Christmas and the end of the year. State Security has threatened Farrat several times with the possibility of prosecuting her for sedition.
Berta Soler is one of the founders of the Ladies in White, a group that emerged at the initiative of several women, relatives of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists -including Moya- convicted during the 2003 wave of repression known as the “Black Spring.”
The European Union and the NGOs Human Right Watch and Amnesty International criticized that wave of arrests and convictions, describing them as political. The Cuban authorities alleged that the accused dissidents were violating national sovereignty on orders from the United States.
The Ladies in White received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 2005.
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