Sit-in at Havana church ends peacefully

From Progreso Weekly staff and news services

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Thirteen Cuban dissidents who occupied a Havana church for two days left the temple peacefully on Thursday night, after being assured by the government that they would not be prosecuted for their deed.

The 13 – eight men and five women – had staged a sit-in at the Church of Our Lady of Charity saying that they wanted to give Pope Benedict XVI a list of grievances. The Pope is scheduled to visit the island March 26-28.

The removal of the occupiers “began at 9 p.m. local time and lasted less than 10 minutes,” said a statement from Church spokesman Orlando Márquez. “The 13 occupants were invited to leave the temple and did not offer resistance” to the police officers summoned by Church officials after hours of negotiations.

“The agents who executed the operation had assured the Church that they would not carry weapons, that they would initially take the 13 persons to a police station and that afterward would take them to their homes,” the statement said.

The Church, which had described the sit-in as “illegitimate” and “disrespectful,” declined to press formal charges.

“No one has the right to turn temples into political trenches,” had said an earlier Church statement.

Other dissident groups, such as the Ladies in White, distanced themselves from the occupiers, although they voiced sympathy for their demands.

According to The Associated Press, the protesters averaged in age about 40 years and none is employed. They included homemakers, restaurant workers, university graduates and retirees.

None has a history of activism, the AP reported, and they apparently are not members of a single group, though one of them said he belonged to a group that calls itself the Cuban Republican Party.

A Progreso Weekly correspondent in Havana reported that before the occupiers left there was some concern that neighborhood residents – irritated by the illegal sit-in and fearful that the occupiers might deface the interior of the church – might evict the occupiers by force. That did not develop.

“The perception in Catholic circles is that [the sit-in] was a political maneuver planned and organized in the United States and overseen by the U.S. Interests Section” in Havana, the correspondent said.