HAVANA, Cuba, July 1 (Ana Aguililla / www.cubanet.org) – Police went to the homes of several prominent dissidents and removed anti-government signs.

Emilio Leyva, president of the November 30 Frank País Movement, said the police told him that anti-government signs would not be allowed. “They scraped the front of our house to remove signs and poked their arms through open windows to remove those stuck on the walls,” he said.

Human rights activist Juan Carlos Bous said a similar incident occurred at the home of Jesús Adolfo Reyes and María de Los Ángeles Borrego, president y vice-president of the Sons of Regla Association (Asociación Hijos de Regla). He said members of the rapid response brigades and the Communist party took part in the removal of signs.

Human rights activists detained by police

ISLE OF YOUTH, Cuba, July 1 (Lamasiel Gutiérrez, Isla Press / www.cubanet.org) – Police last week arrested a group of members of the Union for a Free Cuba and took them to a police station in Havana, said the wife of the organization’s president.

William Prior, Carlos Raico Pupo, Frank Díaz and Jorge Gaspar Mateo were detained June 25 and the organization’s president, Carlos Manuel Pupo, was picked up the following day in San Antonio de los Baños.

Pupo’s wife said the detentions occurred when the group tried to carry out an activity calling for the release of political prisoners.

Prisoner refuses to wear a uniform

ISLE OF YOUTH, Cuba, July 1 (Lamasiel Gutiérrez, Isla Press / www.cubanet.org) – Prisoner of conscience Rolando Jiménez says the Guayabo prison is now requiring prisoners to wear prisoners if they want family visits.

He said Major José Ondares, the prison director, advised his family of the new rule.

’’The Five Heroes imprisoned in the United States have to wear uniforms, so you counter-revolutionaries will have to do the same,” he quoted the major as telling him..

‘’Let them do what they want, I’m not going to put on a uniform, nor collaborate, nor give in to the threats, even if it costs me my life,” he said.

Jiménez, an independent lawyer who was one of the 75 arrested in a mass crackdown in 2003, is serving a 12-year sentence.