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Young Cubans March on Anniversary of 1968 Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia
By Cuban Democratic Directorate

Miami. Cuban Democratic Directorate. August 22, 2008. Cuban human rights activists today marked the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The military intervention to halt the softening of communist rule in Czechoslovakia known as the Prague Spring resulted in the deaths of Czechoslovak citizens at the hands of the Soviet occupying force.

 

In Guantánamo members of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy (CYMD) held a march today in memory of the victims killed during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 20 and 21, 1968. According to CYMD member Isael Poveda Silva, about 20 young Cubans marched through the streets of the city of Guantánamo beginning in the early morning hours.

 

In the municipality of Banes, Holguín Province, human rights activists belonging to the Eastern Democratic Alliance and the Cuban Human Rights Foundation were arbitrarily detained on August 22 as they were attempting a peaceful march to commemorate the events 1968’s Prague Spring and in support of the family of Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Zapata Tamayo is currently being held at Holguín Provincial Prison.

 

The march’s participants had planned to meet at the home of opposition activists Marta Díaz Rondón and Juan Oriol Verdecia Évora, located at Calle Carlos Manuel de Céspedes # 2007 between General Marrero and Ave de Cárdenas, in Banes. At 5:15 a.m. State Security agents and National Revolutionary Police officers arrived at the home and threatened the activists who had gathered there.

 

According to a report by Marta Díaz Rondón to the Cuban Democratic Directorate, Major Wilson and an officer known as “Fredy” “knocked on the doors forcefully and demanded that [activists] Alexander Guerrero Toro and Ángel Luis Santiesteban Rodés, who were inside the house, come out,” stated Díaz Rondón by telephone.

 

The authorities detained activists Juan Oriol Verdecia Évora, Alexander Guerrero Toro and Ángel Luis Santiesteban Rodés. At the time of this writing, Santiesteban Rodés remained under arrest.

 

According to further reports, student leader Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, president of CYMD, was unjustly detained on Wednesday, August 20 by State Security agents on the spurious charge of “threatening,” which was put forward by one of the participants in an “act of repudiation,” against Nestor on July 8 this year. The accuser, a member of the Rapad Response Brigades, was among the paramilitary mob that besieged the home of Rodríguez Lobaina’s father, standing out as he threw heavy rocks into the home attempting to hit those trapped inside.

 

Meanwhile in Havana, human rights activists Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito and former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” were arrested by State Security agents on 15th street, between 10th and 12th in the Vedado area and deported to their home provinces of Villa Clara and Sancti Spiritus.

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