"DOWN WITH CASTRO" Woman Gets Dragged Away by the Neck for Speaking out against the Communist Castro Regime

A Cuban dissident organization published a video this week of a dissident member of the Ladies in White group protesting against the Castro regime in her town. After some seconds of her chanting “down with Castro,” plain-clothed officers appear, grab her by the neck, and drag her into a police car.



The Ladies in White are a group of relatives of political prisoners whose flagship act of protest is to attend Catholic Mass on Sundays wearing white and holding gladiolas and photos of their imprisoned loved ones. For 132 consecutive Sundays, they have faced beatings, arbitrary arrests, mob shaming, and other humiliation for insisting on this practice. They have canceled protests only on the weekend following the death of dictator Fidel Castro.



The dissident group Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), which engages in activism in defense of the Ladies in White and other political groups, published a video on Monday of an unidentified woman in white protest in the town of Calabazar. The video, published at the Cuban-American blog Babalú, appears to have been taken from a nearby building and clearly captures audio of the woman’s protests. She can be heard shouting “down with Castro,” “no more hunger, no more misery,” “long live the political prisoners,” and “freedom for the people of Cuba.”



Shortly after her protest begins, two plain-clothes officers violently apprehend her. She continues to chant through her arrest.