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FROM
CUBA
Wife of dissident beaten on street
HAVANA, Cuba, September 28 (Roberto Santana
Rodríguez / www.cubanet.org) - Josefa
López Peña, wife of ex political
prisoner Miguel Sigler Amaya, was beaten
on the street five days after she and her
husband were taken off a plane bound for
the United States.
López Peña, a founder of
the Ladies in White movement, said she was
going to the Havana home of another member,
Aida Valdés, last Sunday when a young
man got off his bicycle and started to beat
her on the back of her head with an object
he had in his hand.
"Who are you? Why are you hitting?"
she said she asked her assailant. "This
is a warning that we've wanted to give you
for a long time," the man replied.
López Peña received medical
attention at a nearby hospital. She reported
the incident the following day to police,
saying she could identify her assailant,
whom she described as a stall, strong young
man with black hair.
The Ladies in White meet monthly to protest
the imprisonment of their husbands.
López Peña and her husband,
public relations secretary of the Independent
Option Movement, had received visas to the
United States as political refugees and,
with their two minor children, were awaiting
takeoff September 20 at the José
Martí airport when a state security
agent boarded the plane and ordered them
off.
Sigler Amaya subsequently wrote a setter
to President Fidel Castro in which he questioned
the right of the agent to order them off
the plane. "This man from State Security
argued that although all of our documentation
was in order I couldn't emigrate because
I was a counter-revolutionary and they had
the power and the force," he said.
"I fear for our lives in Cuba,"
said his wife. "We hold State Security
responsible for anything that might happen
to us in the future."
Said a spokesperson at the Interests Section:
"We're very worried and we're closely
following this case."
Versión
original en español
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