Bread vendor hit by police cruiser during chase

CAIBARIÉN, Cuba, Dec. 17 (María Caridad Noa / www.cubanet.org) - Ramón Morales says his right wrist was broken when he was tossed onto the hood of a police cruiser driven by an officer who was chasing him because he was selling bread on the street.

Morales said as soon as he saw the cruiser he started to run. “They reached me as I was turning the corner and I went up on the hood,” he said.

Morales said the police took the seven loaves of bread in his sack and fined him 200 pesos, the equivalent of about two weeks’ average salary for Cubans.

The incident occurred last Sunday. A doctor put his right arm in a cast.

Dissident sends greetings on state radio stations

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec. 17 (Iván Sañudo Pupo, ALAS, www.cubanet.org) – Gladys Escandell Martínez says she was threatened by police after she called three radio stations last week and sent on-air greetings to two jailed fellow dissidents.

Escandell, a member of the Republican Party of Cuba and the Latin American Federation of Rural Women, said she called Radio Rebelde, Radio Coco and Radio Metropolitana and sent the greetings to Oscar Elías Biscet and Darsi Ferrer, both medical doctors.

She said two State Security agents later went to her home and threatened her with arrest for “civil disobedience” because of her calls to the radios stations.