Laura Pollán at 75 - Remembering the Cuban dissident leader's legacy. Global rise in number of political prisoners with Belarus and Cuba in the lead. Cuba and Iran undermining Peru

They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." - Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2010)

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, February 13, 1948 - October 14, 2011

Earlier version published as a CubaBrief 

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, was born 75 years ago on February 13, 1948. She had been a school teacher, before her husband,  Héctor Fernando Maseda Gutiérrez, was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003 along with more than 75 other civil society members. Amnesty International recognized them as prisoners of conscience.

Claudia Márquez (izq) , Blanca Reyes (centro) y Miriam Leiva (der), al salir el 7 de abril de 2003 del Tribunal Provincial de La Habana tras conocer las sentencias dictadas contra sus respectivos esposos (Foto: Radio Televisión Martí)

This drove her break with the regime, and the formation of a dissident movement that marked a before and after in Cuban history. Claudia Márquez (izq) , Blanca Reyes (centro) y Miriam Leiva, who had been long time activists, and also had their husbands jailed were founding leaders in the new movement.

Laura reached out to the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the 75 prisoners of conscience jailed in March 2003, which included her husband and they carried out a sustained nonviolent campaign that after eight years obtained the freedom of their loved ones. The first group was released in November 2010, and the last of the group of 75 were freed in March 2011.

Laura was greatly admired both inside and outside of Cuba for founding the Ladies in White movement after the Black Cuban Spring of 2003. She, and the group of women she led, nonviolently challenged the Castro regime in the streets of Havana initially, and eventually across the island.

She did not disband the Ladies in White when her husband returned home in February 2011. Laura recognized that the laws had not changed, that prisoners of conscience remained behind bars.

Laura Pollán and Héctor Maseda reunited in February 2011

Mary O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal on October 24, 2011 reported that Pollán instead of disbanding sought to expand "the movement across the country and promised to convert it to a human rights organization open to all women. Speaking from the Guanajay prison as her condition was deteriorating, jailed former Cuban counterintelligence officer Ernesto Borges Pérez told the Hablemos Press that making public those objectives likely sealed her fate." Laura Pollán died on October 14, 2011 and was cremated shortly afterwards.

Following her death, her husband Héctor Fernando Maseda mourned and through tears observed that "the toll on our private lives has been that after eight years of forced separation, we didn't even get eight months together. So I had one month of happiness for every year of separation."

 

Héctor Fernando Maseda marches with the Ladies in White following Laura's death in October 2011

Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet MD, who was a first degree medical specialist in internal medicine, before being fired from his post by the government for his dissident views, examined the circumstances surrounding the death of  Laura Pollán and wrote an analysis in November 2011 titled "A MEDICAL ANALYSIS OF LAURA POLLAN'S PAINFUL, TRAGIC AND UNNECESSARY DEATH." He concluded that " There is concrete evidence that the closest relatives, friends and dissidents expressed suspicions about a possible assassination by the communist regime's political police. Now, what has been proven over and over again is the stubborn nature of the regime at this sad, tragic and unnecessary death."

U.S. journalist Tracey Eaton interviewed Laura's widower Héctor Maseda on Dec. 15, 2011, about three months after her death, and he held the Castro regime responsible for her death, but admitted that he did not have the evidence to back up his allegation.

Twelve years later, and the wisdom of her analysis is reflected in over a thousand prisoners of conscience, and a dictatorship that changed the penal code to increase punishments for exercising freedom of expression.

Belarus, Cuba, and Vietnam have jailed thousands of prisoners of conscience in recent years.

The Ladies in White continue to be subjected to brutal repression, and four women of this movement are today jailed in Cuba for calling for the release of political prisoners, and nonviolently defending human rights.

Ladies in White Tania Echevarría, Saylí Navarro, Sissi Abascal and Aymara Nieto jailed.

 On April 14, 2022, Ms.Tania Echevarría Menéndez was sentenced to six years in prison for crimes of public disorder and contempt.

On April 18, 2022, Ms. Sayli Navarro Alvares began serving an eight-year sentence for crimes of public disorder, contempt, and assault related to her participation in the July 11 protests.

 

Ms. Sissi Abascal Zamora was sentenced to six years in prison for participating in the 11J protests in the town of Carlos Rojas, in the municipality of Jovellanos, in the province of Matanzas. The 23-year-old activist and member of the Party for Democracy Pedro Luis Boitel has ten business days to appeal. Reports are that a bus full of women dressed as civilians arrived where Sissi was peacefully demonstrating with others on July 11, 2021, and proceeded to beat her and others up, and a bottle was broken over Ms. Abascal Zamora's head requiring that she receive stitches.

Mrs. Aymara Nieto Muñoz served four years in prison for her activism in the Ladies in White and when released officials created a new case against her and sentenced her to five years and four months in prison. This was in retaliation for not having agreed with State Security to leave the country with her family.

Laura is not forgotten, and her memory and example continue to animate the Ladies in White, and their current leader Berta Soler.

Berta Soler Fernandez is the current leader of the Ladies in White in Cuba.

Sadly, too many in the international community are funding the dictatorship, and ignoring what Havana does with the resources provided. On February  12, 2023 in her column "Cuba Dares Biden to Look Away" exposed the nexus between Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and terrorist groups in subverting democracy in Peru.

"In March 2015, political and security analyst Dardo López-Dolz, a former Peruvian vice minister of the interior, laid out the threat before a U.S. House subcommittee. He said Iran and Hezbollah came to his attention in 2011, when “a connection was forming between the Islamic Republic and other activist movements in Peru controlled by Havana, Caracas and La Paz.” The Cuban and Venezuelan “political/social organizations aimed at subverting and weakening our democratic institutions and spreading socialist ideology,” he said, had been operating in Peru “since at least 2005.”

The Islamic regime in Iran, a close ally of Havana, has embarked on a six month long crackdown against protesters killing over 528 protesters, and jailing approximately 20,000 protesters.