More Info on Crackdown During Carter Visit

MARCH 29, 2011

BY: THE HILL

Cuban Democracy Activists Protest at Havana's Capitol Building as Carter Begins Visit

HAVANA - Members of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience Front demonstrated at Havana's historic National Capitol Building, the seat of government before the 1959 totalitarian takeover, to demand the liberation without forced exile of all Cuban political prisoners and to protest against the Communist system.

Despite a Sunday night roundup of Resistance Front activists during which Adriano Castañeda Meneses, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera and Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" were detained, members of the national pro-democracy coalition from several regions of the country carried out the demonstration in the Island's capital, timed to coincide with a visit to Cuba by former President of the United States Jimmy Carter.

During the protest, the activists wore t-shirts reading "We all are the Resistance. Zapata Lives!" The latter phrase refers to prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo who was murdered by the Castro regime in 2010.

A State Security-organized mob attacked the non-violent demonstrators.

"[Eriberto] Liranza was brutally beaten by paramilitary mobs", stated by telephone to the Cuban Democratic Directorate activist Julio Columbié Batista, co-president of the Central Opposition Coalition and a member of the Resistance Front.

Among those detained as a result of the demonstration at the Capitol are activists Eriberto Liranza Romero, president of the Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement and Boris Rodríguez Jiménez, a member of the same organization, a Resistance Front member. Additional activists yet to be identified at the time of this notice are presumed to be detained.

"This action is a demand for the freedom of the political prisoners, and a response– a moral slap in the face– to the campaigns undertaken by the regime to divide the opposition. We are true to our motto: the streets belong to the people", stated by telephone Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez", General Secretary of the Resistance Front.