Cuban police Friday arrested five members of the Rosa Parks Feminist Civil Rights Movement who were demonstrating in Santa Clara for the release of Cuban political prisoners, according to a news release from a Miami-based exile group.
M.A.R. por Cuba identified the women as Sara Martha Fonseca Quevedo of Havana; Martha Díaz Rondon of Holguín; and Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, Donaida Pérez Paseiro and Damaris Moya Portielles, all of Villa Clara. At least two of the women, Díaz Rondon and Pérez Aguilera, are veteran activists; Pérez Aguilera and her husband "Antúnez" were two of five Cubans honored last month by the National Endowment for Democracy in the United States.
"We denounce before international public opinion the repression unleashed by the Castro regime and the arrest of these five Cuban women who, like us, dress in black as a sign of mourning at the violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Cuban people, and demonstrate peacefully in defense of political prisoners in Cuba," M.A.R. por Cuba said in the release
The march in Santa Clara was called to highlight the precarious health of several political prisoners, especially Ariel Sigler Amaya, who reportedly is near death in a Cuban military hospital.
"We demand the immediate release of these Cuban women, and make an urgent appeal to the international community to raise their voice of complaint to this new outrage perpetrated by the regime's political police, because we are all resistance!" M.A.R. por Cuba stated.
(H/T CubaEncuentro.com)
UPDATED, July 12, 2009
At least one of the women, Damaris Moya Portielles, was released about midnight Saturday. Listen to her account of what happened, here.
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