Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega said on Sunday he managed to convince the Cuban government to lift it’s nearly monthlong ban on street protests by “Ladies in White” — the wives and mothers of political prisoners.
Ortega said the Church was “always dealing with” political prisoner issues with the Cuban government.
“In ecclesiastical terms, I would say, for ever and ever,” he said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Archbishop of Havana made his announcement while delivering a mass at the Church of Santa Rita, after which he presided over a march by 12 members of the Ladies in White down the capital’s Fifth Avenue.
For three previous Sundays, similar marches were attempted, but stopped outside the church by police, who said the group lacked a protest permit.
Opposition groups, including the Ladies in White, have recently stepped up their challenge to government authority by regularly taking to the streets.
The protests have aroused strong criticism of the Cuban regime from Europe, the US and international rights organizations, but Havana has so far dismissed it all as a political campaign.
The Cuban government refuses to admit it holds political prisoners and accuses the Ladies in White of being “mercenaries” and agents of US-sponsored “subversion” on the island.
Havana has come under fire internationally and from activists inside Cuba since the Feb. 23 death of dissident Orlando Zapata after an 85-day prison hunger strike to demand the release of 26 fellow ailing political prisoners.
A second dissident, independent journalist Guillermo Farinas, 48, took up the cause with his own hunger strike a day after Zapata’s death and has since rejected the advice of his mother and others to drop his protest lest he die.
Ortega also told reporters that the Catholic Church on Sunday had once again asked Farinas to be more “flexible” in his stance and end his 68-day hunger strike.
“It’s more or less up to him,” Ortega said, adding that the frail dissident has already been visited three times by a bishop and even more often by local priests, “at his mother’s behest to ask him to stop his hunger strike. But he refuses.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS