CUBA NEWS
September 28, 2007

Cuba releases 40 dissidents arrested Thursday: opposition

Yahoo! News.

HAVANA, September 28 (AFP) - The Cuban government has released around 40 people it had detained for trying join a small but bold Havana street protest headed by a leading dissident, an opposition human rights group said Friday.

The arrests took place on Thursday and all but one of those held were released during the night, said Elizardo Sanchez who heads a human rights group Cuban authorities tolerate even though they consider it illegal.

"We registered about 40 arbitrary detentions yesterday," Sanchez told AFP.

Prominent activist Martha Beatriz Roque told AFP several people were roughed up upon their release.

Thursday's detentions came as several dozen people tried to participate in a small protest Roque led outside the Justice Ministry in Havana, dissidents said.

Roque said she and another six people stood outside the ministry for six hours and handed over a letter demanding the release of political prisoners.

"Those who dare think differently than the government and are currently in prison must be released," the dissidents said in the letter addressed to Justice Minister Maria Esther Reus.

The letter also asked that political prisoners be treated "with dignity."

Roque said a crowd of about 100 government supporters gathered across the street to taunt the protesters, calling them "mercenaries" and "worms," terms the communist authorities use to describe foes of the one-party system.

An economist who has been twice jailed for her opposition to the ruling Communist Party, Roque said police eventually forced her and other protesters to to leave the area, escorting them home.

The officer in charge told Roque that police were protecting her from "the wrath of the people," the activist said.

According to the dissidents there are 250 political prisoners in Cuba, a number that has decreased during the 14-month-old interim presidency of Raul Castro.

The government insists there are no political prisoners on the island, but that the jail population includes "mercenaries" financed by the United States, and people who plotted subversive or terrorist acts.

Thursday's arrests came two days after US President George W. Bush called for democratic change in Cuba, saying at the UN General Assembly in New York that "the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end," a reference to the ailing, 81-year-old President Fidel Castro.

Cuba responded by saying the US administration lacked the moral authority to judge Cuba. In his address to the assembly, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called the US leader an arrogant liar, lashing out at what he termed "the delirium tremens of the world's policeman."

Castro has been convalescing in seclusion since he underwent intestinal surgery in July, 2006, when he "provisionally" handed power to his younger brother Raul, Cuba's defense minister and longtime number two.


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