About 30 ''Ladies in White'' were stopped on the march in Havana
Cuban police have arrested the wives and mothers of political dissidents
at a demonstration in the capital, Havana.
About 30 members of the "Ladies in White" were stopped as they marched
alongside the mother of a prisoner who died last month after a hunger
strike.
They were demanding the release of some 50 government critics who are
still being held after mass arrests in 2003.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first Cuban activist to starve himself to
death in protest in nearly 40 years.
The case of Zapata, declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty
International, drew international condemnation and calls for the
immediate release of all Cuba's detained dissidents.
Wednesday's protest was the third held this week by the Ladies in White
(Las Damas de Blanca) to mark the anniversary of the crackdown in the
one-party Communist state seven years ago.
The women were heckled by hundreds of government supporters as they left
a church in the Parraga neighbourhood with Reyna Luisa Tamayo, who
alleges that her son was tortured in jail and that his death amounted to
premeditated murder.
Police officers and interior ministry agents later asked the women to
end their march and take shelter in two government buses. After they
repeatedly refused, several female officers moved in and put them onto
the buses by force.
The Cuban government describes the dissidents as common criminals who
were paid by the United States to destabilise the country.
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