Wife of dissident beaten on street


FROM CUBA
Wife of dissident beaten on street

HAVANA, Cuba, September 28 (Roberto Santana Rodríguez / www.cubanet.org) -
Josefa López Peña, wife of ex political prisoner Miguel Sigler Amaya, was
beaten on the street five days after she and her husband were taken off a
plane bound for the United States.

López Peña, a founder of the Ladies in White movement, said she was going to
the Havana home of another member, Aida Valdés, last Sunday when a young man
got off his bicycle and started to beat her on the back of her head with an
object he had in his hand.

"Who are you? Why are you hitting?" she said she asked her assailant. "This
is a warning that we've wanted to give you for a long time," the man
replied.

López Peña received medical attention at a nearby hospital. She reported the
incident the following day to police, saying she could identify her
assailant, whom she described as a stall, strong young man with black hair.

The Ladies in White meet monthly to protest the imprisonment of their
husbands.

López Peña and her husband, public relations secretary of the Independent
Option Movement, had received visas to the United States as political
refugees and, with their two minor children, were awaiting takeoff September
20 at the José Martí airport when a state security agent boarded the plane
and ordered them off.

Sigler Amaya subsequently wrote a setter to President Fidel Castro in which
he questioned the right of the agent to order them off the plane. "This man
from State Security argued that although all of our documentation was in
order I couldn't emigrate because I was a counter-revolutionary and they had
the power and the force," he said.

"I fear for our lives in Cuba," said his wife. "We hold State Security
responsible for anything that might happen to us in the future."

Said a spokesperson at the Interests Section: "We're very worried and we're
closely following this case."



http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y05/sep05/29e1.htm


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