Castro supporters mob dissident homes
Fri Aug 12, 2005
HAVANA, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Supporters of President Fidel Castro staged angry demonstrations outside the homes of two dissidents on Friday in response to the Cuban leader's call to block opposition activity.
About 100 people chanted "Fidel, Fidel" outside the home of leading dissident Vladimiro Roca and prevented members of his Todos Unidos (All United) opposition group from entering the house for a meeting.
The angry crowd accused Roca of being a "mercenary" on the payroll of the U.S. government and shouted "lackey" and "worm," frequent epithets for opponents of Cuba's Communist government.
"The only meeting here is ours," Juan Laguna, a 70-year-old Communist Party militant. Speakers heckled Roca from a microphone and speaker set up across the street for the rally, which was organized by party officials using walkie-talkies.
"This is like a fascist lynching from the days of Hitler and Mussolini," said Roca, the son on a founding father of Cuban Communism and a former MiG pilot turned Castro critic.
A second counterdemonstration prevented fellow dissident Leon Padron from leaving his home to attend the meeting. The crowd sang happy birthday to Castro, who will be 79 on Saturday.
"It's a setback. Until now they had tolerated dissidents meeting in their homes," said veteran human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, who was heading for the meeting when he stopped at the corner of Roca's house.
Sanchez said the government was becoming more repressive in the face of growing dissent and widespread discontent with Cuba's economic woes.
Three weeks ago, police rounded up 33 dissidents, nine of whom are still being held without charges, and party militants blocked others in their homes to prevent a protest outside the French Embassy to demand the release of political prisoners.
Four days later, Castro warned that "traitors and mercenaries" will be met with patriotic counterdemonstrations every time they overstep their bounds.
In his July 26 speech commemorating the birth of his revolutionary movement in 1953, Castro denied there were dissidents in Cuba, saying they only existed in the "overheated imagination ... of White House bureaucrats."
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