World-Wide Support for Cuban Dissidents Grows

Two Spanish lawmakers, Guillermo Mariscal Anaya of the Popular Party and Carlos Salvador Armendariz, of the People’s Union of Navarro, met with The Ladies in White this Sunday in Havana. The legislators were there on unofficial visits.

They met with the Ladies, who are mothers and wives of jailed Cuban dissidents after their weekly march. The Ladies in White walk in silence and holding white gladiolius along Havana’s 5^th avenue on the way to Mass in St Rita's church . The weekly act of civil disobedience is a call for the release of jailed Cuban dissidents.

The Ladies, who were awarded the Andrei Sajarov Freedom of Conscience award by the European Union’s Parliament in 2005, thanked the two Spanish lawmakers for their moral support and informed them of the plight of their jailed husbands and sons.

Support for Cuban dissidents has been pouring in from all over the world:

• Human right abuses and journalistic repression in Cuba were criticized for the first time by 51 Nations lead by Australia at the UN just last week while debating a resolution to condemn the series of economic sanctions referred to as “The US Embargo”.
  

• The Interamerican Commission for Human Rights recommended that Cuba’s communist regime free its prisoners of conscience and compensate the family members of three cubans that were executed for trying to escape the island in a hijacked vessel and that the Cuban regime introduce constitutional reforms to guarantee an independent judiciary.
  

• Four Latin American ex-presidents, Patricio Aylwin, from Chile; Armando Calderón, from El Salvador; Luis Alberto Lacalle, from Uruguay; y Luis Alberto Monge, from Costa Rica, pledged solidarity with the Cuban people and regret that the communist government of Cuba has not adhered to an agreement it signed in 1996 in the Viña del Mar declaration that guarantees democracy, freedom and human rights.
  

• Reporters Without Borders has singled Cuba out as one of the worst offenders in repressing journalistic freedom and in internet repression.
  

• The Vice President of the European Union’s parliament, Edward McMillan, also visited with the Ladies in White recently.

Cuba’s totalitarian government usually resorts to Orwellian doublespeak to defend itself against the charges of human rights violations; mainly they blame the American Capitalistic Empire for everything. This tired strategy seems to be losing considerable steam lately, especially in Europe.