TIME FOR CUBAN DEMOCRACY

On Wednesday Cuban police detained wives and mothers of political dissidents at a demonstration in the capital, Havana. Some 30 members of the "Ladies in White" were stopped as they marched alongside the mother of a prisoner who died last month after a hunger strike. They are demanding the release of some 50 government critics who are still being detained without trial after mass arrests in 2003.

The BBC understands that most of the women detained in Havana were released shortly afterwards. Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first Cuban activist to starve himself to death in protest in nearly 40 years. The case of Zapata, who was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, and led to significant international condemnation and calls for the immediate release of all Cuba's detained dissidents.

However, recently Cuba's Communist authorities by way of response to outside pressure and international bad publicity have gone on the offensive against dissidents at home and abroad. This protest was the third held this week by the Ladies in White (Las Damas de Blanca) to mark the anniversary of the crackdown in the one-party Communist state which began seven years ago and continues to this day.

The women were heckled by hundreds of well organised government supporters as they left a church in the Parraga neighbourhood with Reyna Luisa Tamayo, who alleges that her son was tortured in jail and that his death amounted to premeditated murder. Police officers and interior ministry agents later asked the women to end their march and take shelter in two government buses. After they repeatedly refused, several female officers moved in and put them on to the buses by force.

The Cuban government routinely describes the dissidents as common criminals who were paid by the US to destabilise the country. Thursday (18th March) is the anniversary of the mass arrests in 2003, the majority of whom remain detained remain behind bars. The anniversary would probably have passed unnoticed but for the death of Zapata, he adds. When the European Parliament voted last week to condemn his death, Cuba responded by launching a counter attack on the EU.

Highly critical articles have appeared on the front page of the official newspaper Granma almost every day since then. Police brutality in Europe was the latest headline, while racism, unemployment and poverty in Europe were others, our correspondent says. The EU has ineffectually called for a policy of engagement and dialogue with the communist-run island, a policy that sits in stark opposite to the continuing US trade embargo. In truth, the US trade embargo, which hurts the ordinary people rather than the Communist Government and its ilk, needs to come to an end.

There is a need for free and fully democratic elections in Cuba - perhaps this last Communist dictatorship may yet be finally consigned into the dustbin of history - either way the decision needs to be made neither by the US Government or the Communist Dictatorship, but, by the Cuban people.