Cuban Dissidents Cancel Weekly March Following Castro's Death
The women typically march through Havana’s streets every Sunday.
— -- The Ladies in White, a prominent group of Cuban dissidents, has cancelled a weekly Sunday protest march in lieu of Castro's death.
Typically, the group of women, who are primarily composed of the wives of jailed dissidents, attend Mass each Sunday wearing white dresses. They then follow the occasion by marching through Havana's streets to protest the detention of political prisoners and support human rights in Cuba.
"We have decided, as fighters of human rights groups, to respect the pain, which we don't share. We will respect and have taken a recess on a national level, wherever the Ladies in White are, to not take to the streets today, to avoid provoking the government," Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, told The Associated Press.
The BBC noted that this is the first time the women have cancelled their protest in 13 years.
The group tweeted "Ha muerto Fidel Castro, que Dios lo perdone, YO NO," in response to Castro's death, words that translate to "Fidel Castro has died, may God forgive him, I WON'T."
Soler said she did not expect Fidel Castro's death to change the human rights situation in Cuba.
"Now that Fidel Castro is not on the earth it doesn't mean we are going to start a new era, a new stage in which Fidel is not physically here in Cuba. We are going to continue with a dictator, Raul Castro, who will do the same thing Fidel did, those two did the same things together. And so in Cuba, the only thing that will change in this new stage is, it will be without the physical presence of Fidel Castro," she told the AP.
ABC News' Mara Valdes contributed to this report.