Spanish women held in Cuba

11 December 2007

BARCELONA – Ten Spanish women were being held by Cuban police at their hotel in Havana on Monday after attending a protest staged by dissidents, a youth organisation said in Barcelona, Spain.

Police took away the passports of the women, who were members of the youth wing of the Catalan regionalist party CDC in Spain.

It was expected that the women, who included a Barcelona city councillor, would shortly be expelled from Cuba. The women had travelled to the island to back dissidents in what they described as attempts to achieve democracy and human rights.

The women joined a march of some 50 Cuban women belonging to a group called Dames in White, which campaigns for the release of 75 dissidents jailed in 2003.

The Cuban embassy in Madrid meanwhile issued a statement on the occasion of the World Human Rights Day, saying that there had not been a single case of “torture, extra-judicial execution or forced disappearance” in the history of the Cuban revolution.

Everyone in Cuba has access to basic services such as health and education, the embassy added.

Subject: Spanish news