Ladies in White Receive Human Rights Foundation Award
HAVANA TIMES – The leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, received the Vaclav Havel award on Wednesday, given by the organization Human Rights Foundation, during the Oslo Freedom Forum held in the Norwegian capital, EFE reported.
The prize of US $52,000, was shared with the Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat and North Korean activist Park Sang Hak. Last year it went to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Saudi activist Manal Al-Sharif and the Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.
In April, Soler also received the Sakharov Prize for the Ladies in White. The European Parliament had awarded the dissident group in 2005, but their members were not allowed to travel outside Cuba until this January’s immigration reforms.
Castristas will complain that the Human Rights Foundation is secretly funded by the CIA and that the Ladies in White are all hired mercenaries who receive their marching orders from Miami or Madrid. It makes sense. Who better to outwit and take down the Stasi-trained, Soviet-equipped Cuban counter-intelligence apparatus than a small group of middle-aged women dressed in white and trained in a gladiola-based martial art called ‘walking to church’. If this operation continues to show promise, the CIA will not have to unleash the wave of senior citizens armed with US military-enhanced ‘libretas’ (ration books). Their secret plan being to take over and occupy every corner bodega thus causing such a ruckus that Cubans will take to streets in protest toppling the regime.