Unlike on other Sundays, Berta Soler was able to reach the church of Santa Rita.
EFE (via 14ymedio) Havana, 14 April 2025 — Unlike on other Sundays, the leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, was able to attend Mass, this time for Palm Sunday, at the Santa Rita Church in the Havana neighborhood of Miramar. The dissident was accompanied by Mike Hammer, head of the U.S. Embassy mission in Cuba, according to the opposition leader herself posting on social media.
However, seven members of the female group were detained for a few hours while attempting to attend the service, Soler reported, referring to the event as the “seventh repressive Sunday” against that group in 2025.
In addition, she reported the arrests of several Ladies in White in the towns of Cárdenas and Colón, in the province of Matanzas, and another in Havana.
They were all headed to mass, as is their usual practice, to pray for the release of political prisoners.
The Ladies in White movement emerged from the initiative of a group of women, relatives of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms in March 2003 during the period of repression known as the Black Spring.
From then on, the wives, mothers, and other relatives of those prisoners were identified by always wearing white, and after attending mass at a Catholic church, they began holding Sunday marches to demand their relatives’ release, becoming a symbol of dissent.
In 2005, the Ladies in White received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament.
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