Yolanda Huerga, one of the founders of the "Ladies in White," which is made up of relatives of Cuban political prisoners, and other exiles on Wednesday will meet with members of the European Parliament to discuss the human rights situation on the island.
This morning, Gary Marx, the inestimable Havana correspondent for the Chicago Tribune profiled Lady in White Katia Martin.
HAVANA -- On a recent Sunday, Katia Martin rose a few minutes after 7 a.m. and donned a white T-shirt with a photograph of her imprisoned husband stenciled on the front.
Martin dressed her twin daughters in matching pink outfits and fed them yogurt before opening the front door to her one-room, rooftop apartment.
She gazed out over the neighboring rooftops like a soldier scanning enemy terrain.
First she glanced to the right to see if a yellow window shutter on a nearby building was ajar, then to her left at the nearest street corner, and, finally, down through a tangle of electrical cables to a first-floor balcony.
On this day the coast appeared to be clear, but that was no guarantee. So Martin proceeded with caution to prepare for mass at Santa Rita church across town.
Each Sunday for the last nine months, Martin often has not been allowed to join a group of women calling themselves the Damas de Blanco--Ladies in White--who after mass silently walk the streets for 10 blocks in civil disobedience. They are protesting the jailing of family members involved in Cuba's tiny opposition movement.
The Sunday march of the Ladies in White constitutes one of the few regular anti-government demonstrations on the island.
Because of her activism, Martin often has been prevented from leaving her home on Sundays and at other times under de facto house arrest imposed on her by neighbors and others who consider her a counterrevolutionary, an action known as an "act of repudiation." Martin was at one point trapped in her apartment building for four days.
"They come and threaten me at the building's front door," said Martin, 25, whose husband, activist Ricardo Santiago Medina, has been jailed since July. "It's like a kidnapping. I constantly feel persecuted."
Martin is one of a small number of Cubans who have taken a big risk by crossing the line from privately musing about the flaws in their society to becoming an activist in an authoritarian state.
Human-rights experts say the risk of dissent has intensified as Cuban authorities continue jailing opposition figures while mobilizing pro-government groups to intimidate those who remain on the outside.
Read the rest of the story here.
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