Four members of an anti-Castro group named after American civil rights icon Rosa Parks, were arrested Tuesday morning after they climbed the steps of the old Capitol building in Havana to demand that the Castro regime halts its repression of the Damas De Blanco.
The four members of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights are: Mercedes Evelyn García, Odalis Sanabria, Tania Maldonado Santos and Sara Martha Fonseca. The president of the group, Iris Tamara Perez Aguilera said police beat the women, threw them into patrol cars and drove them to State Security headquarters in Havana.
Perez called on the international community to demonstrate its solidarity with the activists, noting they were only protesting what has become the the regime's routine rough treatment of the Damas De Blanco -- which is made up of relatives of Cuban political prisoners -- in Havana and in Santiago de Cuba, as they try to attend church to pray for their imprisoned loved ones.
As of Tuesday night, there was no word on the whereabouts of the four detained activists.
Listen to Fonseca's account of the protest before she was arrested, here:
In the words of the protesters, "Down with the dictatorship," "We are all resistance" and "VIVA CUBA LIBRE!"
Here is a photo of the protest, via the Por ellevantamieno popular en Cuba website:
UPDATED, Aug. 25, 2011 -- The women have been released, and at least one of them, Sara Fonseca remains defiant.
This video includes footage of the women's protest, starting at about the 45-second mark (Note how some bystanders express their support for the demonstrators.):
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