Cuban dissidents report more than 100 arrests over the weekend

August 17th, 2015 (EFE) Cuban dissidents reported Monday that more than 100 arrests were made on the island over the weekend at marches and demonstrations around the country, though all who were jailed have now been set free, representatives of the opposition on the island told EFE.  The arrests add to at least 90 such arrests just one week ago.

Ladies in White leader Berta Soler said that in Havana, 37 members of the women’s group and another 27 people were detained during the group’s traditional Sunday march and were kept locked up for more than five hours.

At the same time, another 30 dissidents and seven Ladies in White were arrested as they were leaving their homes to prevent them from taking part in the march.

Soler said that most of the detentions were made violently and that this was the “18th repressive Sunday” during which state security “increased the size of the mobs that it mobilizes to repress the opposition in Havana.”

The arrests came just days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cuba on Aug. 14 for the formal reopening of the United States Embassy in Havana.

For his part, former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer, head of the opposition Patriotic Union of Cuba, or UNPACU, said that in the city of Santiago de Cuba, 117 members of his organization were arrested, while 10 were detained in Guantanamo and another 10 in Las Tunas, at the same time that seven were jailed in Havana for taking part in the Ladies in White march.

He added that in the town of Palmarito de Cauto, in the Santiago de Cuba municipality of Melia, four UNPACU activists were stripped naked and beaten.

“This is a clear message from the regime that it is ready to reestablish relations with the United States and the European Union but not with democratic Cubans and those who could threaten their hold on power,” Ferrer told EFE