(EFE).- Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, and her husband, Ángel Moya, were arrested yesterday for the fourth consecutive Sunday, as confirmed by members of the female group on social networks.
Since the Ladies in White announced that they would protest every Sunday, as before the pandemic, demanding the release of those detained for the July 11 anti-government protests, they have been arrested every week.
“The representative and leader of women in Cuba Ladies in White, Berta Soler Fernández, and Ángel Juan Moya Acosta, ex-political prisoner and human rights activist, have been arrested,” María Cristina Labrada Varona, a member of the board of directors of the Ladies in White.
Hours earlier, Moya had warned about the presence of state security agents around the organization’s headquarters in Havana, and uploaded photos of a small bus and several people, including some women in military clothing.
On January 23, Berta Soler and Bárbara Farrat were arrested for several hours as they left the organization’s national headquarters in Lawton in Havana, where they had gathered to peacefully protest for the freedom of political prisoners.
“We will continue to repeat our presence and it is extremely important that more people join, so that the repressors understand that families are active for the release of their loved ones”
Farrat spent 10 hours in the Cotorro Police Unit, where she refused to drink water or eat food and was released after being fined 30 pesos. Berta Soler, Lourdes Esquivel, Gladys Capote and Yolanda Santana were held in cells by police units in Cotorro and Guanabacoa and fined 2,000 pesos each, in addition to being warned by the authorities.
“We will continue repeating our presence and it is extremely important that more people join, so that the repressors understand that families are active for the release of their loved ones,” he said.
The two weeks following the situation has been repeated without the Cuban authorities or the official media having mentioned the facts, as usual.
The Ladies in White movement emerged in 2003, as a result of the Black Spring. Two years later they won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament.
The EU and NGOs such as Human Right Watch and Amnesty International criticized that wave of arrests, calling them political. The Cuban authorities, for their part, alleged that they were attacking national sovereignty on orders from the United States.
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