Witnesses: Cuban dissidents beaten, arrested in church

[robcon]

Source: CNN

Witnesses: Cuban dissidents beaten, arrested in church

HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuban state security agents followed anti-government protesters into a Catholic Church this week, detaining about a dozen dissidents after hitting and kicking some of them, according to witnesses.

Some 25 dissidents marched peacefully to a church Tuesday in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to request a Mass for a dissident arrested earlier in the week, said Elizardo Sanchez, a leading dissident based in Havana. Sanchez said state security officers attacked the protesters when they arrived at the church and many of them ran inside.

"The repressors, headed by a lieutenant colonel and other state security officers, desecrated the church of Santa Teresita after kicking open one of the doors and savagely attacking the peaceful dissidents," he said in a statement. He said officers "punched, kicked and used pepper gas." Five dissidents remain in detention, he added.

The Cuban government did not immediately respond to the accusations. It considers the splintered dissident groups "mercenaries" who receive money from the "enemy government" in Washington to undermine the Cuban revolution.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/12/05/cuba.dissidents/

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The repression isn't new, but the fact that the Cuban government doesn't have a knee-jerk response for the international press is somewhat new.