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[attr="class","scrollz"]HAVANA — As Sunday-morning Mass ended at Havana’s Santa Rita church, several dozen women in white T-shirts filed out, assembled in rows and began walking silently down the street. A block away, hundreds of uniformed security personnel and plain-clothed men and women stood waiting.

They met at the corner in a melee of shouting and manhandling. The women in white went limp on the pavement, shouting “Freedom, freedom, freedom!” and throwing leaflets into the air. The security teams half-dragged, half-carried them to waiting buses.

A number of men marching with the women were chased, thrown to the curb and handcuffed. As the buses drove away, the protesters lifted defiant fists through the windows while the plain-clothed crowd chanted “This is Fidel’s street!”

The Sunday-morning demonstration of the Ladies in White dissident group is a regular occurrence in Havana. The size of the security force and the fact that the entire operation was conducted in front of international television cameras hours before the arrival here of President Barack Obama were not.