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Cuban Regime Breaks up Human Rights March by Gay Activists
By Cuban Democratic Directorate

Havana. June 25, 2008. Cuban Democratic Directorate. Several groups of activists who support the human rights of Cuban homosexuals attempted to stage a peaceful march to the Ministry of Justice in Havana to demand greater respect for their rights. One of their key demands was for a revision of  proceedings against Cuban homosexuals that resulted in penalties such as arbitrary arrests, beatings, and forced labor in the prisons and concentration camps of the UMAP, or Military Units to Assist Production. Practicing Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other Cubans considered undesirable by the regime or who opposed its rule were also punished in what has been called the Cuban gulag.

 

The march was scheduled to begin in the City of Havana’s Don Quijote Park and end at the Ministry of Justice building, but the activists were assiduously persecuted by State Security agents according to Aliomar Janjaque Chivás, president of the Cuban Reinaldo Arenas Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Memorial Foundation and the march’s coordinator. Janjaque Chivás himself was threatened and placed under house arrest as on his way to the march. Another activist, Ignacio Estrada Cepero, was detained for several hours under the pretext that he was not a resident of the City of Havana and had entered the capital city illegally.

 

“There has been a crackdown against the homosexual community. Our interest in conducting a peaceful march such as those conducted anywhere in the world has been manipulated and repressed” stated Janjaque Chivás by telephone to the Cuban Democratic Directorate.

 

The organizations supporting the march included the Cuban Comission for the Human Rights of Homosexuals and Persons with HIV, the Cuban League against AIDS, the Elena Mederos Foundation, Cuban Reinaldo Arenas Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Memorial Foundation, the Cuban Movement for Homosexual Liberation, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Cultural Center, and the Reinaldo Arenas Gay Political Prisoners Association among others, according to a report by independent journalist Carlos Serpa Maceira during a Radio República broadcast.

 

“This was nothing more than a State Security operation. We are going to organize the march again in the coming days, and we wil try to carry it out again,” concluded Janjaque Chivás.

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