{{Boisterous protesters backing the Cuban government blocked the Monday screening of a documentary featuring Cuba’s best-known dissident, the blogger Yoani Sanchez, who was in attendance after being allowed to leave the communist island for the first time in nearly a decade.}}
Small groups of protesters met Sanchez when she arrived earlier Monday at two airports in Brazil’s northeast.
They called her a “mercenary” who was being financed by the CIA and tossed photocopied U.S. dollar bills her way. One protester got close enough to pull her hair.
Sanchez was also met by supporters and throughout the day in Tweets and a blog posting expressed her joy at being in Brazil, the first stop on her 80-day tour of about a dozen nations.
Yet at the evening screening in a museum, about four dozen protesters surrounded her the moment she walked through the door, shouting “Cuba yes! Yankees no!” and forcing security guards to evacuate her to a nearby room.
“I was expecting it, even before leaving Cuba I knew this could happen,” Sanchez told media minutes later inside the room where she was taken for protection.
“It’s sad because I’ve been waiting one year for this, I really wanted to see (the) film.”
About an hour after being taken out of the screening room, Sanchez, accompanied by Brazilian Sen. Eduardo Suplicy, went to speak to the crowd, both protesters and supporters.
“After remaining silent for a long time, after living in a society where not speaking up was the option of the majority of my countrymen, after so much silence, one fine day I couldn’t take it anymore and I started a blog,” she told those gathered, some who cheered, some who booed.
Sanchez stayed with the crowd for about 45 minutes, then left the venue.
Readmore…http://news.yahoo.com/pro-cuba-protesters-halt-dissidents-brazil-event-015748949.html
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