Reuters AlertNet Lite - Cuban church takes up dissident beatings with govt

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Cuban church takes up dissident beatings with govt

06 Dec 2007 20:41:26 GMT
Source: Reuters

HAVANA, Dec 6 (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church in Cuba said on Thursday it was seeking an explanation from country's communist authorities for the beating and arrest of dissidents in a parish hall two days ago.

Cuba's main rights group said the seven people arrested by state security police at the parish church of Santa Teresita in the eastern city of Santiago on Tuesday had been released.

"The Archbishop of Santiago, Monsignor Dionisio Garcia, is holding conversations with the Office of Religious Affairs (of the Central Committee of the Communist Party)," a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops Conference in Cuba said.

Plainclothes police stormed into a parish hall used for masses. They beat and used pepper spray on a group of dissidents, parish priest Jose Conrado Rodriguez said.

The police took away seven people, including three women, who had marched through the streets protesting the arrest of a fellow dissident and gone to Rodriguez' church to attend evening mass, he said.

The Cuban government has not commented on the incident, which occurred at a time of improved relations between the government and the church.

Cuba was an atheist state until 1992, when the freedom of religious worship was officially recognized. State-church ties improved with the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1998.

Relations have strengthened further recently as the church withheld criticism of Cuba's social problems.

Cuba's main rights group, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation -- which is illegal but tolerated by the Cuban government -- said all the dissidents detained at the church had been freed by Wednesday night.

"The church measures its deeds and words, but for us this was the desecration of a church ... an act of brutal police repression," said the head of the commission, veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez.

"The church deserves an explanation," Sanchez told foreign reporters in Havana. He said Cuba, with some 250 political prisoners, continued to be a "gulag."

Police have picked up dozens of dissidents in recent days in Cuba for temporary detentions that Sanchez said were aimed at discouraging opposition street protests planned for Monday, International Human Rights Day. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle, editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Last updated:Thu Dec 6 20:40:09 2007