http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071206/ts_...issidentsarrest

Cuban authorities seize dissidents at church

HAVANA (AFP) - Cuban security forces detained up to 15 dissidents after storming into a church's parish hall to stop an anti-government protest, the church's priest and a dissident group said Wednesday.

The priest of Santa Teresita church in Santiago de Cuba, Jose Conrado Rodriguez, said at least five people were detained during the crackdown on Tuesday, in the Americas' only one-party communist-ruled state.

A leading dissident group said 15 people were rounded up by police in what it said was an "extremely serious act of political repression".

"They barged in spraying gas in the faces of people from those spray cans, and went about dishing out blows and shouting," Conrado Rodriguez told AFP by telephone.

He said about 15-20 patrol cars turned up at the church, outside which some 600 people had gathered, many of them from a protest march that had just ended.

Some 25 dissidents dressed in black had walked inside the church to protest the arrest of another government opponent, said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission.

"The repressors, headed by a lieutenant colonel and other state security officers, desecrated the church of Santa Teresita after kicking one of its doors open and savagely assaulting the peaceful dissidents," he said in a statement.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071206/ts_...issidentsarrest

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Kuba: Festnahme auf Kirchengrund

Die Kirche Kubas protestiert gegen die Verhaftung von Dissidenten auf Kirchengrund. Er habe von den Behörden eine Erklärung verlangt, zitieren örtliche Medien den Erzbischof von Santiago de Cuba, Dionisio Guillermo Garcia Ibanez. Angeblich hatte am Vorabend eine Gruppe von etwa 25 Dissidenten einen Protestmarsch durch die Stadt im Südosten Kubas veranstaltet und war bis zur Kirche Santa Teresita gelangt. Einige Medien berichten, bis zu 15 Demonstranten seien vor der Kirche verhaftet worden; andere verlegen die Verhaftung in den Pfarrsaal. Übereinstimmend wird gemeldet, dass die Menschenrechtler gegen die Verhaftung von drei Studenten und Initiatoren einer Unterschriftenaktion protestiert hätten. Bei der Polizeiaktion sollen die Ordnungshüter auch den Pfarrer sowie Frauen tätlich angegriffen haben.
(kna 06.12.2007 sk)

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