New arrest denounced by leader of Ladies in White Cuban opposition movement
Havana, Sept 25 (EFE).- Leader of the Cuban opposition movement Ladies in White, Berta Soler, reported on Monday that she was detained again on Sunday along with her husband, former political prisoner Ángel Moya.
Soler also denounced that other Ladies in White members were arrested in Havana and in the provinces of Matanzas (west) and Holguín (east).
Soler and Moya reported on social media that this is their 61st arrest since they resumed their Sunday demonstrations in January 2022 to demand the release of Cuban political prisoners.
As on previous occasions – according to their story – they were arrested by female police officers in front of the Ladies in White headquarters in the Cuban capital and taken separately to police stations, where they were fined 30 Cuban pesos (equivalent to $1.25 at the official exchange rate) before being released.
Soler also denounced the temporary detention of a dozen members of the women’s dissident collective in the cities of Banes (Holguín), Calabazar and Santiago de las Vegas (Havana), and the towns of Cárdenas, Colón and Unión de Reyes in Matanzas.
The Ladies in White Movement was born in 2003 on the initiative of a group of women relatives of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists who were sentenced to long prison terms during the repression known as the “Black Spring.”
Since then, the movement’s members, wives, mothers and relatives of those sentenced, have identified themselves by always dressing in white and holding Sunday marches after attending mass in a Catholic church.
In 2005, the Ladies in White were awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Conscience by the European Parliament. EFE
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