SANTIAGO DE CUBA, May 21 (Luis Alberto Rivera, APLO) – More than a
hundred agents of the Department of State Security (DSE) and at least that many
more members of the paramilitary Rapid Response Brigades skirmished Monday with
dissidents and relatives attending the funeral of political prisoner Marcelo
Diosdado Amelo Rodríguez, who died Sunday in prison.
Amelo's funeral "was carried out under the most violent wave of
repression seen lately," said a local resident who didn't want his name
used.
The funeral procession started out a little after 11 a.m. Monday from
Amelo's home, where the wake had been held, toward Santa Efigenia cemetery. The
approximately 80 dissidents decided to walk ahead of the hearse, disregarding
three buses that were waiting to transport them. The hearse carried Amelo's
casket, wrapped in a Cuban flag, and the marchers carried the flower
arrangements.
No farther than 100 meters from the house, officers of the DSE, who had
surrounded the area, asked the marchers to let the hearse through. The
dissidents instead tried to take the casket out of the hearse to carry it by
hand, police tried to prevent it, and the mob became unruly, crying out "Take
the body out," and "Liberty."
At this point, police charged the funeral cortege, hitting and kicking the
marchers;
bystanders started calling police bullies and tried to interfere to prevent
further abuses. Police reacted by arresting several dissidents, putting them in
patrol cars that had to clear their way out through the crowd with sirens
blaring. The street was left strewn with flowers.
The hearse's driver, apparently under orders from police, took off, and the
remaining
dissidents then boarded the buses and followed. Others continued on foot
toward the cemetery.
At this point, observers say, police called in the Rapid Response Brigades.
Later it was learned that workers from the port, railroads, customs and several
other State enterprises were called.
The marchers were not allowed into the cemetery by the assembled forces.
Only some relatives managed to get in.
Amelo, 53, was serving an 8-year sentence for "rebellion" in the
Aguadores prison. Saturday at 2 p.m. he felt some chest pain and at 3 a.m.
Sunday, he was taken to the Saturnino Lora hospital in Santiago, where he died
shortly before 11 a.m.
Versión original
en español
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