Cuban dissidents report 90 detentions after protest in Havana

August 10th, 2015 (EFE) HAVANA - Some 90 dissidents, among them members of the Ladies in White, were detained for several hours after staging a protest in a Havana park.

Opposition members Antonio Gonzalez-Rodiles, his girlfriend Ayler Gonzalez, and Angel Santiesteban told EFE that they were arrested and taken in a patrol car to a detention center at midday Sunday, after meeting with the Ladies in White at the end of the women’s customary weekly procession after attending Mass in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood.

The three said they were locked up for several hours and that they knew of other dissidents in the same situation.

Gonzalez-Rodiles said the demonstrators were carrying photos of jailed comrades as evidence of “the resurgence of repression against opposition activists.”

For her part, Ayler Gonzalez said that 52 members of the Ladies in White were in Gandhi Park, including their leader Berta Soler, as were another 39 dissidents and activists including political organizer Angel Moya, musician Gorki Avila and independent journalists Claudio Fuentes and Camilo Ernesto Olivera.

Santiesteban, also a former political prisoner, said that at the police station where he was taken, he was registered and issued an “act of warning” which he did not sign.

The authorities also warned him that they could revoke at any time the probation he was granted on July 17.

According to the latest report by the opposition Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission, or CCDHRN, at least 674 temporary detentions were made during July for political reasons, the highest number since June 2014.

There were also 21 cases of physical abuse during the arrests.