The United States on Monday voiced concern over Cuba’s detention of almost 100 Ladies in White activists, and urged Havana to stop making arbitrary arrests.
“We are deeply concerned by the Cuban government’s repeated use of arbitrary detention and violence to silence critics, disrupt peaceful assembly and intimidate independent civil society,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement.
Nuland said Washington was aware that 94 members of the group were detained and beaten on Sunday during their “weekly gathering, church attendance, and peaceful march to focus attention on continued human rights abuses in Cuba.”
“We call on the Cuban government to end the increasingly common practice of arbitrary and extra-judicial detentions, and we look forward to the day when all Cubans can freely express their ideas, assemble freely and express their opinions peacefully,” Nuland said.
The group, which won a European Parliament Sakharov human rights prize in 2005, was set up by wives and relatives of jailed political prisoners who have since been freed.
President Raul Castro’s government charges that they and all other dissidents are “mercenaries” who are supported financially by the United States.
In Cuba, the only one-party communist regime in the Americas, it is illegal to speak out against the government, news outlets are controlled by the state, and access to the Internet is tightly controlled.
US speaks out on Cuban activist arrests
