Cuba deports 8 Spaniards for joining demonstration

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba deported eight Spanish women on Monday who took part in a dissident protest for the release of political prisoners, a Spanish diplomat said.

Cuban authorities seized their passports and airline tickets and told them to stay in their hotels after they took part on Sunday in a march by Cuban women demanding the release of their husbands and sons jailed for political reasons.

"They told us they were coming for us later to expel us," the spokeswoman for the group, Barcelona city councilor Francina Vila, told reporters.

Spanish diplomats accompanied the women, members of the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia party, to Havana airport and saw them onto a flight to Madrid.

The deportations occurred on International Human Rights Day as Cuba's communist government announced it would sign two United Nations covenants on political, civil and social rights.

The Catalan women, along with others from Sweden, Bosnia and Peru, had joined a march by a Cuban dissident group known as the "Ladies in White" because they dress in that color and walk in silent protest demanding freedom for their men.

The foreign women, who traveled to Cuba on tourist visas, carried banners that said "democracy" and "freedom."

The Cuban government insists that tourists have no business meddling in Cuba's internal affairs and has in the past deported numerous foreigners who support local dissidents.

Cuba's communist authorities insist there are no political prisoners in the one-party state, and it labels all dissidents as "mercenaries" on the payroll of its arch-enemy, the U.S. government.