More than 100 Cuban human rights activists arrested over the weekend

If you want to measure the effects of Cuban dictator Raul Castro’s reforms, you should forgo counting how many new “private” restaurants have opened in Havana, how many new “private” taxis are operating, or how many new “private” seamstresses are making quinceañera dresses. Instead, count how many peaceful Cuban human rights activists are being beaten, arrested, and imprisoned by the brutal and vile Castro government.  If you use these acts as a measure, you will see that the violence and repression of dictator Raul Castro has exponentially increased ever since he announced his so-called reforms.

Via the Miami Herald:

Cuban police briefly arrested more than 100 dissidents over the weekend

http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2012/02/28/00/24/1kYTv9.Em.56.jpg

Police briefly arrested more than 100 Cuban dissidents over the weekend in a multi-pronged campaign to prevent public demonstrations marking the anniversaries of the deaths of five Castro opponents, activists reported Monday.

Former political prisoner Angel Moya and nine other government opponents also were detained and there was no word on their whereabouts as of late Monday, said his wife, Bertha Soler, leader of the dissident group Ladies in White.

“There’s a kind of state of paranoia” in which security agents are sweeping up anyone they consider a threat, said Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, who put the number of confirmed weekend arrests at more than 100.

Most were freed hours or days later, not in time to join protests marking the Feb. 23, 2010 death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo after a lengthy hunger strike, or the deaths of four South Florida men whose Brothers to the Rescue airplanes were shot down by Cuban fighter jets on Feb.?24, 1996.

One crackdown that elicited surprise was that against the group Ladies in White in Havana, which has been largely left alone during the past two years, when they attended Sunday mass at the Santa Rita church and then marched around the neighborhood.

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