This Father’s Day, Ladies in White throughout all of Cuba mobilized with the purpose of carrying out peaceful activities to celebrate the date. As a consequence, the regime’s police forces responded with a repressive operation which began days prior, resulting in the arrests of countless of these women throughout all of the island’s provinces. Among those arrested was 75 year-old Blanca Hernández Moya, who suffered physical attacks at the hands of police agents at around 9 AM on Saturday, June 16th.
The elderly woman, Hernandez Moya, was on her way from her home in Central Havana to the headquarters of the Ladies in White- the home of the fallen leader of the group, Laura Pollan, located on Neptuno Street- when she was violently intercepted by state police.
“They attacked me”, said Moya, “they shoved me into a vehicle, and a female agent twisted my arm and hit me”.
After some minutes, the vehicle which the Lady in White was in parked and she was kicked out, being left abandoned by a dam near the desolate area known as Penalver, on the outskirts of Cotorro.
Hernández Moya explained that she suffers from diabetes and only had a bottle of water with her. She had to walk all the way back home under the scorching sun. “I thought I was going to die“, recounts the activist.
Due to the physical aggressions she endured and the conditions in which she was abandoned, Blanca Hernandez says that she suffered a “brain spasm and nearly lost consciousness“.
Regardless, the Lady in White left her house once more and directed herself to the headquarters of the group on Sunday, June 17th and managed to surpass the police cordon and made it, although still suffering from the aftermath of the beatings she had endured just hours before. “I feel that I am still in very bad conditions“, said Moya, explaining that because of how she felt she could not walk with the Ladies on that morning.
Blanca Hernández Moya, in addition to being an active Lady in White, was one of the women who carried out the famous protest a few months ago in Havana’s Fraternity Park, along with Ivonne Malleza Galano, where they both shouted slogans in favor of freedom and demanded just salaries for the Cuban people. Hernandez was detained for numerous weeks because of that civic protest, despite her age.
This report was based on Twitter messages made public by former political prisoner of conscience Ivan Hernandez Carrillo- @ivanlibre.
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