Cuban blogger detained, beaten on way to march

The Miami Herald reports: Famed Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez and another blogger were punched and thrown violently into a car by presumed state security agents as they walked to participate in a peaceful march in downtown Havana yesterday.

"No blood, but black and blues, punches, pulled hairs, blows to the head, kidneys, knee and chest,'' Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald shortly after she and Orlando Luis Pardo were freed. "In sum, professional violence.''

"I, being a person of verbal pacifism, am shaken by this violence, because violence silences anyone,'' the blogger declared in a telephone interview.

Sánchez, the best-known Cuban blogger on the island and off (for Generacion Y) , said she and bloggers Pardo and Claudia Cadelo and a woman friend were walking to join a "march against violence'' organized by several young musicians when they were intercepted by three men in civilian clothes. Cuba's state security service agents frequently operate out of uniform.

"We were almost there when we were intercepted by three men in a car with civilian license plates who ordered us to get in,'' she said. "We refused. I didn't know if they were kidnappers. And the level of their violence went up.''

Sánchez said they were near the Calixto Garcia hospital in downtown Havana when she and Pardo were ``dragged toward the car. She was "thrown head-first inside,'' where "they applied judo or karate holds to us and the punches . . . kept raining down.''

During the fray, Sánchez continued, she grabbed a piece of paper from the pocket of one of the men and put it in her mouth.

"I don't know, it was like saying to him, `I have something of yours. . . . He became even more furious and there were more blows.'''

The paper, which she kept, contained a name and a telephone number.

After driving for about 20 minutes, the driver stopped in an area far from where Sánchez and Pardo had been detained "and we were violently thrown on the street,'' Sánchez said.

The two later reunited with Cadelo and the friend, who told her they had been taken in another car to a police station, but with less violence, and were then freed, Sánchez said.

The 5:30 demonstration was planned as "a peaceful performance-march -- neither a protest nor a political demand'' organized by Luis Eligio of the musical group OMNI Zona Franca and the two members of the rap group Los Aldeanos, according to the blog Penultimos Días -- Penultimate Days.

According to the blog, which features several writers, the demonstrators planned to carry cardboard signs with messages like "Join us,'' "No more violence'' and "For the future of our children'' as they marched near the Yara movie house in downtown Havana.

"These are new people, with stunning ingenuity,'' said Penultimos Días, which added that the organizers had carried out a prior event in the Dimitrov Park that included "group fraternizing exercises . . . and group theater.''

Asked if she believed her detention was designed to block her participation in the march, Sánchez said: "Evidently. Anything else would be pure speculation.''

The march, which Penultimos Días said drew some 200 participants, was the second demonstration in Havana in the past three weeks to bring together young Cubans generally critical of the island's communist system.

On Oct. 20, a dozen Cuban bloggers and more than 100 Internet sites around the world joined in a "virtual protest,'' using Tweets, text messages and blog posts to send out messages like "Freedom'' and demanding the release of all political prisoners.