Members of Damas in Blanco arrested in Cuba for the ninth consecutive Sunday

Havana, 21 Mar The leader of the Cuban dissident group Damas in Blanco, Berta Soler, and her husband, fellow activist Angel Moya, were detained for several hours this Sunday, for the ninth consecutive weekend, both reported on social media. Soler and Moya were arrested as they left the organization's headquarters, in the capital town of Lawton, when they tried to protest — as every Sunday since the end of January — against those arrested at the anti-government demonstrations on July 11. “As we left the national headquarters in Lawton of the Ladies in White at 10.50 am (local time), the political express Angel Moya Acosta and I were arrested by female police officers dressed in civilian clothes,” Soler explained on Facebook. Both were taken to police stations where they were held for about an hour and later released, according to the activist. Moya received two fines of 10 and 30 Cuban pesos for not carrying documentation and writing “Patria y vida” on the walls of the cell, respectively, as he himself reported on Facebook. Members of the Ladies in White have been arrested every weekend since they announced in January that, as before the pandemic, they would go out to protest again, this time by those arrested at the July 11 protests. The Ladies in White movement emerged in 2003, following a wave of repression by the Cuban government that was called “the black spring”. They were the mothers and sisters of prisoners that the European Union and NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described as “politicians”. Their Sunday marches became a symbol of dissent. Two years later, they won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Conscience from the European Parliament. CHIEF lh/jpm/lll