Four days after Pope Benedict left Cuba, 43 dissidents have been detained in Cuba in a new wave of repression.
Former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer and his wife, Belkis Cantillo, a member of the Women in White, were among those arrested.
“We have been able to confirm that 43 dissidents have been detained – 10 women and 33 men – during the wave of repression on Monday in Santiago de Cuba, and all remain under arrest,” Elizardo Sanchez of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights said on April 4.
He said that most of them belong to the Patriotic Union of Cuba, a dissident movement that supports a peaceful transition to democracy.
In a statement sent to CNA on April 4, the Patriotic Union of Cuba said the repression began on Monday morning, when ten activists in the town of El Caney “gathered at the home of coordinator Guillermo Cobas to peacefully protest” the incarceration of Andres Carrion Alvares, Rogelio Tabio Lopez and Bismark Mustelier Galan.
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