Yoani Sanchez and 20 Dissidents Arrested

Yoani Sanchez from her blog Generation Y.

HAVANA TIMES — Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez and between 20 and 25 other dissidents were arrested on Wednesday and Thursday according to a report just in from DPA news (in Spanish).

Among those arrested were ex-hunger striker Guillermo Fariñas, Orlando Luis Pardo, Antonio Rodiles and Angel Santiesteban.

The report (quoting dissident Elizardo Sánchez of the illegal Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation) states that a lawyer, Yaremis Flores, who provides free legal assistance to members of the opposition, was “arbitrarily” detained followed by the other dissidents who began showing up in protest at the police station.

According to pro-government blogger Yohandry Fontana, Sanchez was arrested for “disturbing the peace and social indiscipline.”

This is Sanchez’second arrest in just over a month since she was detained on October 5th with her husband as they attempted to attend a trial in the eastern Cuban city of Bayamo.

The authorities claimed that Yoani aimed to disrupt the trial of Spanish politician Angel Carromero, who was charged and convicted in the death of opposition leader Oswaldo Paya and another activist.

8 thoughts on “Yoani Sanchez and 20 Dissidents Arrested”

  • I’m not stupid. You are the intellectually dishonest here. You justify Leah-Lynn’s arrest because she was ‘doing illegal things’. Well, the same could be said about Yoani by creating a small havoc in front of a police station. Two weights, two measures, that’s all what it is about.

  • Luis, don´t be stupid. She has been arrested for doing illegal things. Not for writing a blog or visiting a trial location or even a foreign embassy. So far, this is not illegal in the US. The US, an imperfect union, neither has not arrested her for what she was about to do as did Cuba with Sra. Sanchez. The comparison between the two situations is ridiculous.

  • Why is anybody surprised that a dictatorship which denies the Cuban people all rights and freedoms actually acts like a dictatorship which denies the Cuban people all rights and freedoms?

    This is normal behaviour for the paranoid Castro regime.

  • Leah-Lynn Plante has been arrested many times this year. However, no media or human-rights group gives a damn about her and her companions. Why? Simple:

    1. She lives in the ‘home of the free’
    2. She didn’t get a first page story on the Wall Street Journal just a couple of months after starting a blog.

    Connect the dots, connect the dots…

  • It’s funny because every source I see tells us different names and places. And it’s also funny that this all took place exactly one day after Obama’s reelection, just enough time for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to spill her bile on Miami Herald. Pff…

  • I fail to see the point. Arresting Sra. Sanchez only brings attention to her and her cause. Cuba is an island. Where is she going to go? Letting her stay in her home would be punishment enough. Having been denied permission to leave the country 19 times, it is not clear what the Castros agenda is with regard to this internationally-known dissident. The regime is so self-absorbed in maintaining its control over a poor and unarmed population that they fail to see the public relations disaster they generate every time they martyr her through these ¨detentions¨.

  • This looks like it was so premeditated… the same ‘news agent’ who reported the incident gets a camera ready to film the confusion and show the to the same useful idiots the ‘brutal repression’ of the evil Cuban regime.

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