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NEWS
EU to send reps
to Cuba to give women rights prize
Strasbourg, France, Nov 16 (EFE).- The European Parliament decided
Thursday to send a delegation to Cuba to deliver a prestigious human
rights award to a group of women - wives, mothers and daughters of
political prisoners - who were barred by the Communist regime from
traveling to France to receive it.
Last year's Sakharov Prize was awarded to the Women in White. When the
Castro regime denied the activists permission to travel to this city
that is the seat of the EU legislature, the women asked the body to send
representatives to Havana to give them the prize there.
The decision to do so was made during a conference Thursday of the heads
of parties represented in the body.
The congress also resolved to send another delegation to Myanmar,
formerly Burma, to try to deliver the same award to democracy advocate
Aung San Suu Kyi, who was named its recipient in 1990. She has been
under house arrest since 2003.
Whether the parliamentary delegation would be allowed to enter Cuba
remains to be seen. The Cuban government in recent years has expelled
European legislators taking part in pro-democracy events on the island,
and has barred entry to the United Nations' special human rights monitor
for Cuba.
The Women in White movement includes wives, mothers, sisters, daughters
and other female relatives of the 75 dissidents arrested and sentenced
in spring 2003 to jail terms averaging 20 years.
The prisoners - mostly democracy advocates and independent journalists
and librarians - were convicted of "undermining the revolution."
Cuba's 47-year-old one-party state is one of the few regimes in the
world that requires of its citizens official permission to leave the
country. EFE
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