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Cuba's Ladies in White mourn leader, vow to go on

Late "Ladies in White" leader Laura Pollan was remembered on Saturday having a very simple altar in her residence within the crumbling Central Havana neighborhood and vows that the dissident group she founded would go on.

A blue vase holding the ashes of Pollan, who died on Friday soon after a shorter illness, sat using a smaller table with quite a few photographs of her and flowers brought by pals who included diplomats.
A handful of Cuba's most prominent dissidents attended the wake, where they grieved for any former school teacher who became 1 of Cuba's best opposition voices as she led the Ladies in White having a fearless defiance on the Cuban government.
Different to other turbulent moments when her group was harassed by pro-government mobs, the streets outside her home were quiet, with life transpiring as usual.

Leaders on the communist island have said absolutely nothing about her death, in Washington White Home Press Secretary Jay Carney praised Pollan and her group to have "courageously voiced the core wish of the Cuban people today properly folks everywhere to reside in liberty."

"Since the start the (Obama) administration now we have worked to contact out to the Cuban men and women in support in their want to freely establish their future and Cuba's future. We will continue that work in Pollan's memory," he said.

Pollan led the founding on the Ladies in White after 75 dissidents, which includes her husband Hector Maseda, had been imprisoned within a March 2003 government crackdown referred to as Havana's Black Spring.

Dressed in white and each carrying a person white flower, the ladies defied government pressure by staging silent marches every single Sunday on 1 of Havana's major avenues demanding the making of these family and friends. At the end of every march, they shouted in unison "libertad," or freedom.

Public protests were unknown in the a moment remain a rarity nowadays in tightly controlled Cuba, the spot where the government views dissidents as mercenaries for any United states of america, its longtime enemy that works closely with dissidents to market political alter.
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