BRATISLAVA, December 12, (WEBNOVINY) — The Jan Langos International Award Foundation from the Slovak Republic has awarded the Jan Langos International Prize to the Cuban Ladies in White movement. Slovak Ambassador to Cuba Zdeno Rozhold personally informed the movement’s leader Laura Inés Pollan Toledo about the prize at the Slovak Embassy in Havana. Prime Minister Iveta Radicova attended the formal award ceremony in the Slovak capital of Bratislava on Friday.
„The Slovak Republic proudly professes its support of defenders of human rights and freedoms in oppressive regimes, such as Cuba. We thereby follow up on our own tradition of civil resistance against totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Ladies in White are the conscience of today’s Cuba and the symbol of the growing role of women in political struggle for freedom and human rights in the world,“ said Slovak Foreign Affairs Minister Mikulas Dzurinda on the occasion of International Human Rights Day, commemorated on December 10.
Ladies in White – Damas de Blanco is the movement of wives and mothers of 75 Cuban „prisoners of conscience“, whom Cuban police arrested during the Black Spring of 2003. To protest against their imprisonment, for more than seven years they regularly met in the center of Havana in a silent protest. Eventually, most of the detained political prisoners were released, through the last eleven still remain behind bars. Spokesman for the Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry Lubos Schwarzbacher provided this information to SITA news agency.
SITA