Thursday, December 11, 2008

Human Rights Day in Havana

According to press reports from Havana, the Damas de Blanco walked through a Havana neighborhood and distributed copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights before climbing the steps of the Capitolio building and calling aloud for freedom.

More than 50 dissidents were detained Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Elizardo Sanchez, who said that many were detained in the provinces as they prepared to come to Havana.

Sanchez denounced the “pure, hard repression” that is the government’s “sui generis way” of celebrating Human Rights Day. Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque said Cuba celebrates the day with its “head held high.”

The Christian Science Monitor reported on an activist, Belinda Salas, who said she and three others were beaten by police on Tuesday after leaving the U.S. diplomatic mission, and the three others were arrested.

Coverage in English from EFE and The Miami Herald, and in Spanish from Reuters and Spain’s ABC.

[Reuters photo.]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cuba is major human rights abuser, yet, I still strongly maintain that they have the right to do whatever they choose.

Let the cuban people figure it out, anything else is imperialism.

Anonymous said...

There's nothing wrong with a little push in the name of human rights.

Anonymous said...

well anon, then by your standard no one had any right to condemn apartheid in South Africa or Chile under Pinochet. that was for those people to "figure out."

Anonymous said...

Talking about Human Rights in Cuba, is like talking about virtue in a whorehouse.
Anonymous,
I guess then Pinochet had the right to do whatever he pleased, right? Or the Argentine military had the right to abuse its citizens too? Or your myopic point of view applies only when we are talking about the Cuban regime?