Mothers, wives urge Cuba to release dissidents
HAVANA (Reuters) – Mothers and wives of Cuban dissidents imprisoned since a March 2003 crackdown demanded their release on Tuesday, saying their loved ones were guilty only of loving their country.
The demand, in a letter from the group known as “Ladies in White” to President Raul Castro and former leader Fidel Castro, was issued a day before the sixth anniversary of the arrests of 75 activists and independent journalists in what has come to be known as Cuba’s “black spring.”
Of the 75, who received sentences from six to 28 years in jail, 21 were released early and 54 remain behind bars.
“We demand the immediate and unconditional freedom of our political prisoners,” said the letter, read to journalists by Lauren Pollan, whose husband Hector Maseda is serving a 20-year sentence.
“We have arrived at the sixth anniversary of Cuba’s black spring, and there remain in prison 54 men whose only crime has been to love their homeland and to peacefully struggle so Cuba can have a better future,” the letter said.
Read full story at Reuters.
