Cuba Politics News and Information
Reuters
The Cuban authorities have blocked access from Cuba to the country’s most-read blogger, Yoani Sanchez, she said on Monday.
Sanchez, whose critical ”Generacion Y” blog received 1.2 million hits in February, said Cubans can no longer visit her Web page and two other home-grown bloggers on the Web site on a server in Germany.
All they can see is a “error downloading” message.
“So the anonymous censors of our famished cyberspace have tried to shut me in a room, turn off the light and not let my friends in,” she wrote in her blog on Monday.
Sanchez said she cannot directly access her Web site from Cuba to update postings anymore, but has found a way to beat her Communist censors through an indirect route.
The 32-year-old philology graduate has attracted a considerable readership by writing about her daily life in Cuba and describing economic hardships and political constraints.
She has criticized Cuba’s new leader, Raul Castro, who formally took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro last month, for his vague promises of change and minimal steps to improve the standard of living of Cubans.
“Who is the last in line for a toaster?” was the title of a recent blog that satirized the lifting of a ban on sales of computers, DVD players and other appliances Cubans long for, though toasters will not be freely sold until 2010.
In a country where the press is controlled by the state and there is no independent media, Sanchez and other bloggers based in Cuba have found in the Internet an unregulated vehicle of expression.
“This breath of fresh air has dishevelled the hair of bureaucrats and censors,” she said in a telephone interview, vowing to continue her blog. “Anyone with a bit of computer skills knows how to get around them,” she said.
The aim of government censors is to block readership in Cuba, where people have limited access to Internet, she said.
“They are admitting that no alternative way of thinking can exist in Cuba, but people will continue reading us somehow,” she said. “There is no censorship that can stop people who are determined to access the Internet,” she said.
(Editing by Sandra Maler)
We support Yoani and her freedom of speech and hope she is well and not being held by the Cuban government. If anyone has any information, please post or send to email address at the bottom of this page.
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This is my signature - get yours in Your Control Panel. Go ahead and add a link to your site. Self promotion is permitted as long as it is beneficial to our community.
Blocking access to internet and information in general had been the “modus operandi” of the Castro regime for the las 4 decades.
This is only another of the “reforms and initiatives” of the Raul Castro’s government.
HAVANA — Cuba said Friday that it would allow all Cubans to buy and use cellphones, the latest step by new President Raul Castro to improve access to consumer goods.
What a joke….the government acts like they gave the population something, when in fact, Raul knows ordinary Cubans are unable to afford cell phones. Raul should say, “Sorry for the April Fools joke.”
Not only are Cuban citizens unable to blog, they can’t even purchase a darn toaster. You’d think with the untold freedom we have here more people would recognize the US as a great country instead of condemning it.
T B Jade: you mean the freedom to travel to Cuba like the rest of the world can?
I don’t disgree that lack of ability to travel to Cuba is an infringement on our freedom. However, I think it has more to do with the relatively large number of Cuban Americans in Florida and our lip service to anti communism than anything else.
Check out this link
http://blacknell.net/dynamic/2008/03/05/us-govt-no-talking-about-cuba-travel-on-the-internet/
http://millennialpointofview.com
Solidarity with theCuban people! Long overdue is travel between US and Cuba, as well as affordable internet and cell phone service. The relatives have waited long enough!
A nice video interview of this lady in this link:
http://www.video.mediaset.it/video.html?sito=iene&data=2008/04/04&id=4803&categoria=puntata&from=iene
[Spanish with Italian undertitles]. She’s an impressive lady…
Tato
