Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: a Cuba, le donne in bianco tengono duro

il regime e' irrequieto
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904875404576530302503295010.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond
Rocks and iron bars were the weapons of choice in a government assault
on a handful of unarmed women on the outskirts of Santiago de Cuba on
the afternoon of Aug. 7. According to a report issued by the Paris-
based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the beatings
were savage and "caused them injuries, some considerable."
It was not an isolated incident. In the past two months attacks on
peaceful women dissidents, organized by the state security apparatus,
have escalated. Most notable is the intensity with which the regime is
moving to try to crush the core group known as the Ladies in White.
This is not without risk to the regime, should the international
community decide to pay attention and apply pressure on the white-
elite regime the way it did in opposition to apartheid in South
Africa. But the decision to take that risk suggests that the 52-year-
old dictatorship in Havana is feeling increasingly insecure. The
legendary bearded macho men of the "revolution," informed by the trial
of a caged Hosni Mubarak in an Egyptian courtroom, apparently are
terrified by the quiet, prayerful, nonviolent courage of little more
than 100 women. No totalitarian regime can shrug off the fearless
audacity these ladies display, or the signs that their boldness is
spreading.
The Castro brothers' goons are learning that they will not be easily
intimidated. Take, for example, what happened that same Aug. 7 morning
in Santiago: The women, dressed in white and carrying flowers, had
gathered after Sunday Mass at the cathedral for a silent procession to
protest the regime's incarceration of political prisoners. Castro
supporters and state security officials, "armed with sticks and other
blunt objects," according to FIDH, assaulted the group both physically
and verbally. The ladies were then dragged aboard a bus, taken outside
the city and dropped off on the side of a highway.
Some of them regrouped and ventured out again in the afternoon, this
time to hold a public vigil for their cause. That's when they were met
by another Castro onslaught. On the same day thugs set upon the homes
of former political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer and another activist.
Six people, including Mr. Ferrer's wife and daughter, were sent to the
hospital with contusions and broken bones, according to FIDH.
The Ladies in White first came on the scene in the aftermath of the
infamous March 2003 crackdown in which 75 independent journalists and
librarians, writers and democracy advocates were rounded up and handed
prison sentences of six to 28 years. The wives, mothers and sisters of
some of them began a simple act of protest. On Sundays they would
gather at the Havana Cathedral for Mass and afterward they would march
carrying gladiolas in a silent call for the prisoners' release.
In 2005 the Ladies in White won Europe's prestigious Sakharov prize
for their courage. Cellphones that caught the regime's brutality
against them on video helped get their story out. By 2010 they had so
embarrassed the dictatorship internationally that a deal was struck to
deport their imprisoned loved ones along with their family to Spain.
But some prisoners refused the deal and some of the ladies stayed in
Cuba. Others joined them, calling themselves "Ladies in Support." The
group continued its processions following Sunday Mass in Havana, and
women on the eastern end of the island established the same practice
in Santiago.
Laura Pollan, whose husband refused to take the offer of exile in
Spain and was later released from prison, is a key member of the
group. She and her cohorts have vowed to continue their activism as
long as even one political prisoner remains jailed. Last week I spoke
with her by phone in Havana, and she told me that when the regime
agreed to release all of the 75, "it thought that the Ladies in White
would disappear. Yet the opposite happened. Sympathizers have been
joining up. There are now 82 ladies in Havana and 34 in Santiago de
Cuba." She said that the paramilitary mobs have the goal of creating
fear in order to keep the group from growing. But the movement is
spreading to other parts of the country, places where every Sunday
there are now marches.
This explains the terror that has rained down on the group in Santiago
and surrounding suburbs on successive Sundays since July and on other
members in Havana as recently as Aug. 18.
Last Tuesday, when four women dressed in black took to the steps of
the capitol building in Havana chanting "freedom," a Castro bully
tried to remove them. Amazingly, the large crowd watching shouted for
him to leave them alone. Eventually uniformed agents carried them off.
But the incident, caught on video, is evidence of a new chapter in
Cuban history, and it is being written by women. How it ends may
depend heavily on whether the international community supports them or
simply shields its eyes from their torment.

 il regime e' irrequieto
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Alba
http://chez-isabella.blogspot.com/
Isbel è una Cubana che vive in esilio a Montreal.
Carlo "Jurassic Park"