[News]Berta Soler: "The Cuban regime has detained me up to three times in a week"

[SougarLord]

Berta Soler has already lost count of the times she has been detained by the Cuban police. "Since 2015, they have done it every Sunday," says the leader of the Ladies in White in a telephone conversation with ABC, who has suffered firsthand the repression of the Cuban regime for years. "In a week up to three times I have been arrested," he stresses. She has also been physically attacked, "not only I, but all the Ladies in White, by the men and women of the police and the paramilitary mobs organized by the Cuban regime."

 

The repression of the regime to intimidate this movement, whose work was recognized by the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2005, awarded by the European Parliament, has taken many forms: "We have detected up to twenty methods," says Soler herself before detail some of them: «Smear campaigns through social networks, both outside and inside Cuba, with the aim of dismembering this movement and generating states of opinion against the Ladies in White, or creating profiles similar to ours with the in order to create confusion. Another way to erode the strength of the organization is to force its members to leave the country "permanently", "with expenses paid."

 

 

Other women, "those who do not want to leave the country," are pressured by using their children: the youngest are expelled from school and the oldest are not given a job, "putting pressure on business owners." . Others are detained. Some of those with minor children are even threatened with losing custody.

Destroy movement

 

Soler continues her account of the infinity of forms of repression used by the regime against the Ladies in White: itate They also arrest us and take us to inhospitable places and release us late at night without knowing where we are or how to return; other members of the movement are deported outside of Havana. The detentions can last between 48 hours and seven days, according to Soler. "They also fabricate common crimes to take us to prison, or they give us high fines." Added to this is the media persecution of which they are a victim: "They record videos for us that they later edit to cause confusion." As well as the creation of false groups, with names and appearance similar to the Ladies in White, in order to create confusion on social networks. And the list goes on and on ... Raids of their homes and seizure of material and financial assets, harassment of relatives, "even our mothers ..." The regime stops at nothing. The forms of repression are inexhaustible, "to discourage and destroy the Ladies in White movement, but thank God we remain strong and resist."

 

Soler's testimony is one of those that includes the complaint presented by the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights before (OCDH) before the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women against the Cuban Government for “discrimination and systematic violence against Ladies of white". Both she and her colleagues in the movement consider it "important" that the repression "and harassment suffered by human rights activists, and in this case the Ladies in White" be denounced before a body "of such a high level" as the UN . It is true that they have had to wait almost two decades for a voice to rise to denounce the excesses of the regime against this organization, founded in 2003 by the wives, mothers and relatives of political prisoners imprisoned during the Black Spring. "These 17 years have not been easy at all," says Soler. The Cuban regime is always repressing those who oppose it.

 

This group has also suffered for years, according to the OCDH complaint, violence in their environment fed from power: acts of repudiation, insults by civil groups, which according to the leader of the Ladies in White are mobilized by paramilitaries who are going to work centers, schools ... to mobilize people from these centers, also members of the Federation of Cuban Women, the Communist Party ... They organize them and bring them in buses to attack us physically and verbally in acts of repudiation.

 

Silence makes you an accomplice

 

The step forward taken by the NGO, based in Madrid, is also very important for Soler because it occurs when “all over the world there is a call for an end to violence against women: NGOs, international organizations ... We have complained a lot because people of great prestige have remained silent in the face of the repression we have suffered. And when someone is silent in the face of an atrocity, they become an accomplice. While in the world violence against women was being fought, in Cuba it continued and intensified ”, emphasizes Soler. "It is important that a complaint has now been made to the UN about this violence against women in Cuba, and especially against the Ladies in White," she insists.

 

The Ladies in White movement currently has 72 members, compared to the 450 women who served in it between 2013 and 2014, its period with the highest representation. In the last decade, many of them have left because they have left the country "asking for political asylum, others have left because they have been intimidated by the Department of State Security, and others because they were ill ..." These figures confirm the " dismemberment »of the Ladies in White as a consequence of the repressive system of the Cuban State Security. Between 2018 and 2020, they have suffered 2,686 arbitrary arrests, according to the data collected by the complaint sent by the OCDH to the UN a few days ago. But we resist and will continue to resist. As long as there are still political prisoners in Cuba, the Ladies in White will be there to advocate for their freedom and we will continue to act peacefully to demand their release from the regime, concludes Berta Soler.