The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald reports that Cuban journalist/blogger/human rights activist Dania Virgen Garcia was imprisoned last week after being convicted of "abuse of maternal authority."
By all appearances, however, it appears that is just another made-up charge the dictatorship is using to silence one of its opponents.
Here is the story:
Dissident Cuban journalist Dania Virgen García apparently struck her 23-year old daughter during a fight. In less than 48 hours, she was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 months in prison.
Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez said Wednesday he'll need a week or two to thoroughly investigate the arrest of García, 41, who also marched often in support of the Ladies in White.
But Sánchez said he has a strong hunch: ``It could well be a case of political repression, taking advantage of a family situation.''
That's not uncommon, he added, in a country where the government can easily drum up an array of criminal charges against opponents of the communist system.
Sánchez said he obtained preliminary information on the case after his Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation sent an investigator to the Havana home García shared with her daughter, Suzy, and 2-year-old nephew.
``The daughter was reticent to speak, but the family seemed to be hostile to [García's] dissident activities,'' he said. ``She said her mother was properly sent to jail because of abuses . . . She also said maybe there [in prison] she would change her dissident activities.''
The daughter also told the investigators that she ``argued a lot'' with her mother, and indicated that at some point the mother struck her, Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald via telephone from Havana.
García was arrested April 22, apparently on charges of ``abuse of maternal authority'' and the next day was tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 months in prison. Sánchez said. She was sent to the country's largest prison for women, Manto Negro.
In Miami, Carmen Ferreiro, a member of a group that supports dissidents and has contracted a Havana lawyer to appeal García's case, said she also had information the family was ``very pro-government.''
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