Let Her Eat Mosquitos

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

[Maybe she wanted to be allowed to pay her housemaid to spray the
mosquitos. Whatever, Martha Beatriz Roque has found a new way to get
the press attention she craves. Now she's an insecticide dissident.
But she's so macho (macha?) that dengue doesn't faze her.]

source - JosePertierra@aol.com

Cuba dissident Roque detained in fumigation dispute

HAVANA, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Cuban police on Saturday detained one of
the country's best-known dissidents, Martha Beatriz Roque, apparently
for refusing to allow fumigators into her house during a state
campaign to eradicate dengue disease.

"They came in a Lada (automobile) and took her away. We don't know
what they're going to do," fellow dissident Arnaldo Ramos said after
witnessing the mid-afternoon incident at Roque's Havana home.

Cuba began an emergency campaign earlier this month to contain a bad
outbreak of the potentially lethal mosquito-borne viral disease
dengue fever, with the main thrust being house-to-house fumigation.

Roque, speaking before she was picked up, said she had denied entry
to the fumigators on health grounds.

"I'm not in a great state, and the fumigation could be damaging.
They've very aggressive, and they're coming to take me away," she
told Reuters by telephone just minutes before she was driven off.

Dissidents are often picked up for short periods, and it was unclear
how long Roque might be held.

Roque, who was released from prison last year after nearly three
years behind bars on charges of inciting sedition, heads the
dissident Cuban Institute of Independent Economists.

President Fidel Castro's government regards her and all other
dissidents as counter-revolutionaries in the service of the U.S.
government or Florida-based anti-communist Cuban American groups.

15:38 01-26-02
 
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