(Reuters) – Cuba’s Ladies in White held their weekly protest march without incident on Sunday just before Pope Benedict’s visit to the island and said they wanted to meet with him, if only for a minute, to discuss human rights.
The dissident group’s leader, Berta Soler, told reporters she agreed with the pope’s comments on Friday that communism had failed in Cuba and a new economic model was needed.
More than 30 women, dressed in white and carrying pink gladiolas, walked silently along the main boulevard in Havana’s Miramar district before shouting “Libertad”, or “Liberty”, as they have on Sundays for the past nine years.
“Las Damas de Blanco” is Cuba’s leading dissident group and was formed by the wives and mothers of 75 dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown on Fidel Castro’s opponents.
They have marched in Havana every Sunday since 2003 to demand the release of all political prisoners.
More than 70 of the group were briefly detained last week, fueling expectations that the government, which views opponents as mercenaries of the United States, might clamp down to prevent public demonstrations during the pope’s stay.
The women said 18 of their members in eastern Cuba were being held on Sunday and another seven in the Havana area.
But all was peaceful on Sunday as a throng of reporters, many in town to cover the pope’s visit, watched the only public protest permitted by the Cuban government.
In a tree-shaded park after the march, Soler told reporters the group had requested a very brief meeting with Benedict during his visit to Cuba, which starts on Monday with a public mass in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba.
“We are asking for one minute with the Holy Father. We want him to know the current reality of the Cuban people,” Soler said, citing problems such as marginal human rights and official repression.
The pope will come to Havana on Tuesday and leave after a public mass on Wednesday in the capital’s Revolution Square.
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Soler said the group had not received a response to the meeting request, but still held out hope that it would happen. The Vatican said earlier Benedict had no meetings with dissidents on his schedule.
Soler said the women would attend Wednesday’s mass, which is expected to draw a million people, “in spite of the repression of the Cuban government” and the fact that the authorities had told the group after last week’s arrests it could not attend.
She said the women would dress in white, but not turn it into a political event by holding up signs or shouting slogans.
Pope Benedict told reporters on Friday that “Marxism … no longer corresponds to reality” and “in this way we can no longer respond and build a society.”
“New models must be found with patience and in a constructive way,” he said.
Soler agreed.
“He’s not mistaken. Communism doesn’t work in Cuba. Really, the Cuban government has supported communism to repress its people,” she said.
(Editing by David Brunnstrom)