An estimated 200 pro-government demonstrators marched in Cuba's capital Tuesday to counter a protest by relatives of jailed dissidents, as a hunger-striking activist vowed to press on to get political prisoners freed.

The demonstration by pro-government Cubans countered a smaller march by about 20 members of the "Damas de Blanco" - "Ladies in White" - protesters whose loved ones are political prisoners.
 

The group has staged periodic protests demanding the release of their jailed family members.
 

But their protest was met with scorn and anger by pro-government ralliers, who shouted slogans like "the streets belong to Fidel" and who dismissed the dissidents as pawns of the United States.
 

The tensions on the street here came as dissident hunger striker Guillermo Farinas told AFP Tuesday that he would continue his 20-day-old hunger strike when released from hospital where he was being fed intravenously.
 

"I am going to remain [on my hunger strike] until the final consequences, until my demands are met," Farinas said by phone from a hospital in Santa Clara province. He is demanding the release of all political prisoners.
 

Revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, 83, led Cuba for almost 50 years and remains head of the Cuban Communist Party. President Raul Castro, now 78, replaced his brother Fidel at Cuba's helm in July 2006 during a protracted health crisis for the elder Castro.

Dissidents imprisoned
The Damas de Blanco were holding their second day of protests to mark the seventh anniversary of the jailing by the government of 75 dissidents, who were imprisoned in the spring of 2003.
 

The group attended mass at the San Juan de Letran Catholic Church, and then marched to the headquarters of the Union of Cuban Journalists, where they chanted their demands that their imprisoned relatives be freed.
 

Dissident protesters nearly clashed with the government supporters, but security agents dressed in street clothes kept the two groups apart, and arrested one man for shouting anti-government slogans.
 

Rights groups estimate Cuba has more than 200 political prisoners in a population that tops 11 million.
 

The Cuban government however maintains that there are no political prisoners in the only one-party Communist regime in the Americas.

Plea for prisoners release
In Madrid, meanwhile, Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar has signed a petition calling for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Cuba, his production company said.
 

The Oscar-winning director put his name to the petition entitled "I accuse the Cuban government" that was launched on a Spanish blog on Friday, the company, El Deseo, said in a statement.
 

Several personalities, including Spanish-Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, are among some 5,000 people who have already signed it.
 

The petition calls for "the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners in Cuban jails and the respect of the exercise, promotion and the defence of human rights throughout the world."

It also condemns the death on February 23 of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata, who was "unjustly imprisoned and brutally tortured in Castro's prisons and died from a hunger strike while condemning crimes and the lack of rights and democracy in his country."
 

Source: AFP