Cuba arrests Ladies in White

The 'Damas de Blanco,' a group of Cuban women seeking the release of political prisoners, held a protest in front of Raúl Castro's office Monday.

By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 22, 2008 edition

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Havana, Cuba - – When Laura Pollán's husband, a journalist, hosted his colleagues at their house in Havana, she busied herself in the kitchen making coffee. When their talk turned "too political," she left.

But since his imprisonment, the former high school teacher is now at the center of discussions, prayers, fasting – and a rare, impromptu street protest Monday. Ms. Pollán is a leader of the "Damas de Blanco" (Ladies in White), a group of wives, mothers, and sisters of 75 dissidents, many of them reporters, jailed after a sudden sweep of arrests nationwide in March 2003.

On Monday morning, Pollán and nine other Damas were roughed up by a mob and arrested near the offices of President Raúl Castro. "We are here to demand the release of our husbands and won't leave until they are free or they arrest us. We have waited long enough, we want to talk to the new president," Pollán said, according to Reuters.

Moments later, a bus pulled up and about 20 female corrections officers tried to arrest the women, who sat on the sidewalk, clasped arms, and refused to move. A mob of about 100 Cuban government supporters, mainly women from nearby government buildings, joined the fray, picking the Damas up, throwing them into the waiting bus, and yelling insults, Reuters reported.

Monday's protest was unusual. It may, as Pollán suggested in a recent interview here, reflect a broad, emerging expectation of loosening political restrictions in the one-party Socialist state.

Raúl Castro officially became Cuba's first new president in nearly 50 years in February, when he took over for his ailing brother Fidel Castro. Raúl has recently dropped restrictions on ownership of computers and cellphones, among other changes. Some here and abroad have expressed the hope he would go beyond granting access to consumer goods and services. But the government response to the Damas protest Monday may be designed to tamp down such expectations.

Certainly, the Damas have been the only tolerated expression of opposition for some time. Each Sunday, the Damas take to Havana's streets in a 10-block march that starts at Santa Rita de Casia Church and ends at a nearby park. Easily recognized by the all-white clothes they wear, the faces of their brothers and uncles worn as pins on their blouses, they seek the immediate release of their relatives, whom they say were given unfair trials and detained on false charges.

Observers say these women represent the only systematic, peaceful civil disobedience taking place today in Cuba. They have received global attention and won international accolades, and in doing so undergone a personal transformation that Pollán says she didn't know was within her.

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