Cuban security forces detained up to 15 dissidents after storming into a church's parish hall to stop an anti-government protest, the church's priest and a dissident group said on Wednesday.
The priest of Santa Teresita church in Santiago de Cuba, Jose Conrado Rodriguez, said at least five people were detained during the crackdown on Tuesday, in the Americas' only one-party communist-ruled state.
A leading dissident group said 15 people were rounded up by police in what it said was an "extremely serious act of political repression."
"They barged in spraying gas in the faces of people from those spray cans, and went about dishing out blows and shouting," Conrado Rodriguez said by telephone.
He said about 15 to 20 patrol cars turned up at the church, outside which some 600 people had gathered, many of them from a protest march that had just ended.
Some 25 dissidents dressed in black had walked inside the church to protest the arrest of another government opponent, said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission.
"The repressors, headed by a lieutenant colonel and other state security officers, desecrated the church of Santa Teresita after kicking one of its doors open and savagely assaulting the peaceful dissidents," he said in a statement.
Sanchez, whose organization is outlawed but largely tolerated by the communist regime, later said that eight detainees had been let go by authorities, but that "seven remain under arrest."
He said the crackdown was an "extremely serious act of political repression with practically no precedent."
The commission said it "hopes the government will conduct a serious investigation and stop encouraging or allowing premeditated and unnecessary acts of police brutality against citizens trying to exercise their right to demonstrate."
Sanchez said the police action was part of "a policy of preventive repression" ahead of Human Rights Day on Monday when several opposition members have scheduled events.
A spokesman for Cuba's Catholic Bishops Conference said the police action inside a church was "unusual" and "very regrettable," adding that he hoped it proves to be "a very isolated incident."
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS