Protesters Disrupt ‘Peace for Cuba’ Rally : Demonstration: Call for the lifting of U.S. sanctions angers anti-Castro faction in N.Y. More than 10,000 people participate in march.

NEW YORK —  Anti-Castro demonstrators from as far away as Miami’s Little Havana took to the streets of Manhattan on Saturday to protest a rally by peace activists who favor dropping economic sanctions against Cuba.

“Cuba si , Castro no!” echoed through Times Square as the boisterous crowd of more than 10,000 assembled for a march on a convention center where the “Peace for Cuba” rally was held.

The anti-Castro faction waved hundreds of Cuban flags and loudly chanted in English and Spanish for Fidel Castro’s removal as Cuban leader.

“We are the people of Cuba,” said Francisco J. Hernandez, president of the Cuban-American National Foundation. “The Cuban people are sending a message: The celebrities are on the wrong side of the people and the issues.”

Hernandez, a participant in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, was one of thousands of Cuban expatriates who turned out in subfreezing temperatures for the rally. Included were several hundred Cuban-Americans who came north from Miami, including Dr. Manuel Alzugaray.

“We want our country free,” said Alzugaray, who escaped a Cuban prison in 1962. “Thirty years are enough. Our people need freedom.”

“Castro--30 Years Murdering!” said one of the many signs that appeared amid the sea of red, white and blue flags; another showed Castro hung in effigy. A demonstrator in a wheelchair carried a banner reading, “Castro Is Worse Than Stalin.”

Among those listed on a news release as endorsing the “Peace for Cuba” rally were “Cheers” star Woody Harrelson, singer Harry Belafonte, actor Martin Sheen, singer Jackson Browne and actor Ed Asner. Singer Kris Kristofferson canceled a scheduled appearance at the rally, organizers said.

The group favors lifting travel restrictions and the 30-year-old trade embargo on Cuba, along with closing the U.S. naval base on the island, located at Guantanamo Bay.

Organizer Gavrielle Gemma said four protesters were forcibly ejected from the rally.

“They’ve been whipped up into a frenzy,” said attorney William Kunstler. “They really want some kind of a blood bath to topple Castro in Cuba. There is no realistic successor to Castro.”

“The United States government takes the view that now that the Soviet Union is gone, it can run the world its own way,” said Tony Benn, a Labor Party member of the Britain’s Parliament.

“We are going back, in the name of New World Order, to 19th-Century imperialism,” Benn said.

The crowd, which moved for a dozen blocks through Manhattan, arrived at the Jacob Javits Convention Center about an hour before the “Peace For Cuba” gathering. Hundreds of police officers waited outside, but there were no arrests.