Activists, Bloggers on the Cuba Money Project Vimeo Channel

For anyone interested in United States (US) policy, human rights activism, or the problem of free expression in Cuba, there is a new must-see channel on Vimeo. It belongs to the Cuba Money Project.

Last December, journalist, blogger, and Flagler College professor Tracey Eaton began the Cuba Money Project (CMP), a non-profit research and reporting initiative that aims to investigate and bring greater transparency and accountability to US federal spending on “pro-democracy” programs in Cuba. With the help of a grant from the Washington-based Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Eaton has employed a blend of traditional and new media techniques in his work.

In addition to an active newsfeed and blog, the CMP website includes data visualizations of spending details, a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) tracker, and spaces where readers can contribute their own knowledge.

US funding in Cuba: ‘Pro-democracy’ or anti-government?

Despite sanctions against spending US dollars in Cuba, the US government has spent millions of dollars over the last five decades on an interventionist policy towards Cuba. Since 2007, Congress has allocated between 13 and 45 million USD per year to be spent on “pro-democracy” programs in the country.

These programs have grown out of a US-Cuba policy framework that once sought to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. US ire for Cuban leadership began decades ago with Fidel Castro’s declaration of the socialist character of the revolution, and his refusal of economic aid from the US, and Cuba’s subsequent alliance with the Soviet Union.

Today, the rhetoric has shifted: the stated goal of US policy in Cuba is no longer to bring the downfall of the government, but rather to support Cuban citizens’ efforts to improve their lives through the restoration of human, civic, and economic rights. Yet regardless of how the US chooses to represent its efforts, the “pro-democracy” programs that it supports are, by nature, anti-government, or at least fall in opposition to some part of the Cuban system as it currently stands.

Diverse opposition

The 24 interviews on CMP’s Vimeo channel feature Cuban human rights activists, traditional dissidents, bloggers, and government workers and supporters, along with policymakers from Cuba, England, and the US. I recently had the chance to interview Eaton about this impressive archive.

Eaton’s goal is to get representative views from across the spectrum of opinion and influence on these issues:

People have passionate views. I want to help them tell their story without taking sides. Letting them talk into the camera is a great way to do that. […] Video [allows] people to speak directly to the [viewers] without any intervention from me. I ask questions, but I don’t filter what people say. I try to let them tell their story. I edit the videos very lightly, if at all.

He says that the archive is far from complete, and that he is determined to get more Cuban government supporters and workers to participate.

The videos do not form a cohesive narrative about activism and US involvement in Cuba; rather, they show the truly diverse range of ideas and goals espoused by Cuban political activists and by those in the US who influence US-Cuba policy. As dissident leader Martha Beatríz Roque says:

[l]a ideología dentro de la opposición es diversa. […] No somos partido único—partido único es el partido comunista.

Ideology within the opposition is diverse. […] We are not one sole party—the communist party is a sole party.

One important difference between activist groups that is all but indecipherable in mainstream coverage of Cuba is that which separates “old guard” dissidents, whose primary aim is to bring about the downfall of the Castro regime and the Cuban socialist project at large, and those who advocate for human rights in Cuba.

While leaders like Roque, who is connected with anti-Castrist leaders in Miami, believe that more US government money could make a meaningful change in dissident work on the island, Oswaldo Payá, leader of the famed 1990s Varela Project, is not so sure of this:

El dinero de los Estados Unidos no va a decidir el cambio en Cuba. […] La esencia del problema es que el gobierno cubano no reconoce los derechos de los ciudadanos cubanos en Cuba. […] El problema está en Cuba, y la solución está en Cuba, y entre cubanos.

Money from the United States is not going to drive change in Cuba. […] The essence of the problem is that the Cuban government does not recognize the rights of Cuban citizens in Cuba. […] The problem is in Cuba, and the solution is in Cuba, between Cubans.

Unemployment among opposition activists

Eaton has interviewed several members of the women’s opposition group, Las Damas de Apoyo, who advocate for the end of politically-motivated incarceration in Cuba. They work in support of the Damas de Blanco, a coalition of women whose husbands and sons have been imprisoned for political reasons. Each of the women interviewed described how she had lost her job, and was unable to find work, because of her political beliefs:

Unemployment and underemployment among members of Cuba’s political opposition is widespread…[They] are in a difficult spot…They have to do something to get by. I can understand why a dissident might accept help from a non-governmental organization.

But, he says, “It’s a risky proposition. Accepting support from a US-financed NGO can set them up for possible arrest or jail time.” And doing political work costs money:

If dissidents from Havana need to travel to another town to meet with other dissidents, it costs money…Internet access and phone calls are extraordinarily expensive…Simple things can be tough to accomplish in Cuba, especially if you are strapped for cash. You can’t just walk to a Kinko’s on the corner to make copies.

Opposition leaders in various camps described the problems that money can create for their cause, particularly when coming from the US. Aleida Godinez, a state security agent, believes that when US money stops coming in, the dissident movement will end. When asked about US support for pro-democracy initiatives in Cuba, Godinez notes an important problem that many Cubans perceive within this paradigm:

Los promotores de los valores de la democracia, de la libertad, son norteamericanos. No entiendo por que razón no permiten que un país como Cuba no puede elegir su propio sistema social. […] [Demuestra] una falta de respeto para el pueblo cubano.

The people who promote the virtues of democracy and freedom are North Americans. I don’t understand why they cannot allow a country like Cuba to elect its own social system. […] It [shows] a lack of respect for the Cuban people.

 

“Dissident bloggers” or just bloggers?

Eaton has interviewed three of Cuba’s most prominent anti-government bloggers, Claudia Cadelo [es], Laritza Diversent [es], and Yoani Sánchez [es]. I asked him what he thought of their involvement with opposition initiatives, and how he saw them fitting into the larger landscape of pro-democracy activism that CMP seeks to better understand.

Eaton calls Cuba’s bloggers a “diverse bunch.” “[T]hey shouldn't be lumped together with political dissidents,” he told me. “Some Cuban bloggers support the socialist system. Others rebel against it, but don't consider themselves to be dissidents.”

“Many bloggers want change, but steer clear of politics,” he told me:

When I talked to blogger Claudia Cadelo last year, she…didn't seem too interested in politics. She wants change. She wants an expansion of basic freedoms. But I wouldn't consider her to be a political dissident.
[…]
Some bloggers purposely avoid the U.S. Interests Section in Havana because they don't want to be linked to American efforts to undermine the Cuban government.

Indeed, many of the island’s most widely read bloggers advocate for change, but do not engage directly with politics. Even Yoani Sánchez did not begin blogging with a particular political agenda, though unlike many, she has since become a vociferous advocate for particular political changes in Cuba.

If there were a political platform for bloggers, Eaton says it would be advocacy for free expression and open Internet access for all Cubans:

My impression is that a key issue for many Cuban bloggers is freedom of expression. They want Internet access for all. They want it to be affordable. They want to network with other people and they want the freedom to use technology without someone looking over their shoulder. […] Outside Cuba, there are many bloggers and democracy activists who are eager to see change on the island. Many are Cuban exiles who have no plans to return to Cuba while the Castro brothers are in power. They are quick to support many of the bloggers, and sometimes pull them into the swirling currents of the U.S.-Cuba grudge match whether the bloggers want that or not.

Projects like Eaton's might well serve as a counterbalance to the common assumption by many activists groups that all Cubans who criticize their government are alike. No matter what side they're on, anyone interested in the complex political world of Cuba today should check out the Cuba Money Project Vimeo channel.

Written by Ellery Roberts Biddle 

Source: Global Voices

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A conversation with a Cuban telecommunication engineer

I asked for input and test runs from people in Cuba in a recent post, and I've had an interesting email conversation with a telecommunication engineer who says he has never worked in that field. He asked me not to share his name or email address.

We talked about Internet access. He says only foreign people with permanent resident visas, foreign students, and business with foreign capital can get Internet accounts, and that those dial up accounts have all ports open.

Enterprises throughout the country can get DSL connections, but they are limited to Web (HTTP) applications. He has also heard rumors that pro-government bloggers get DSL connections.

He told me that Cubans are not allowed to connect to the Internet from their homes so they pay an illegal fee of 1.50 to 2.00 CUC per hour to buy time from foreign students and others who have dial-up accounts. (One CUC = US$1.08 and the average wage is 20 CUC per month).

It is legal to buy a WiFi card (if you can find one in stock) and connect at one of a few hotels in Havana or Varadero with WiFi connectivity. They charge 8 CUC per hour for access to a 128 kb/s link that is shared by all of the hotel users at the time. The second legal option is to go to a Cyber-Café or hotel which charges 2 CUC for 15 minutes of access to PC with "veeery slow" connectivity.

Education centers like universities and medical schools are connected by fiber. Within the organizations they have 100 mb/s LANs behind NATs. He recalls a time when the university he attended (I won't say which one) had only 512 kb/s connectivity for approximately 1,000 PCs. That was eventually stepped up to 2 mb/s.

He is on point-to-point Ethernet connection to enet.cu, and is able to trace the route from his dial-up connection to Google via a Newcom International satellite link. Average ping time to Google was 683 ms. Ping times to other machines at enet.cu averaged 110 ms.

He did not want to run many tests, because he feared surveillance by CuCERT. Like their counterparts in other nations, CuCERT is charged with responding to network security incidents, but he characterizes them as being like "cyber-cops, who can enter your house, pick up your HDs and walk away without previous notification."

(I tried to reach cucert.cu, but could not from the US -- not sure if it is blocked or down or both).

He gave me the IP address of a university server that was running network monitoring software. I could see graphs of traffic on the links to the university, the internal Ethernet LAN, temperature, and disk utilization on several servers. I could also reach the help desk, but resisted the urge to submit a help desk ticket request :-). You see a sample traffic graph above (click on it to enlarge it). The green line is incoming traffic and the blue outgoing. As you see, the 2 mb/s link is pretty well saturated -- surfing must be slow.

It feels cool to see the graphs, and I bet they would be upset to know that they were visible, but they are not of much practical value except to the network administrators at that university. If one could get similar statistics from all Cuban universities, one could begin to stitch together a picture of the backbone networks.

He also confirmed that bootleg satellite TV from the US is common and found in almost all parts of the country. People buy a satellite receiver from a local supplier who gets an account from the US. Some of those people sell service to their neighbors using coaxial cable, although he thinks that activity is decreasing after several antenna seizures. The service costs around 10 CUC per month, and the viewers cannot change channels themselves.

There are "muyyyy" few people with HughesNet Internet links, and they are heavily prosecuted and can go to jail if caught. He said WiFi is everywhere, and is mainly used to share music and videos and play games. He said the government is concerned about that, but I don't understand why since WiFi is local, and I doubt that they are concerned with copyright violation on the music and video :-).

We talked a bit about the Alan Gross case. He thinks the trial and sentence were for political reasons, and the government hopes to do a prisoner exchange. Gross got a long sentence, but a Cuban could get 3-5 years for having a satellite link to the Internet. He said there are some people with satellite connection who provide service to others using WiFi access points and repeaters and homemade antennae, but, as mentioned above, that is risky business.

If you are in Cuba, how does your experience compare to what I've just described?

Larry Press
 
From: The Internet in Cuba

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"Better to live in a slum" than in Cuba

Either you’re a part of the Castro clan and their hangers on or you don’t have a chance, says Cuban dissident Yoani Sánchez.

Yoani Sanchez in her apartment in Havana, Cuba.

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, the Czech Republic has made helping dissidents in repressive regimes a foreign policy priority with Cuba and Belarus front and center; the first Cuban political prisoner granted political asylum in this country, Rolando Jiménez Posada, arrived with his family and relatives in October 2010.

Independent Cuban journalist Yoani Sánchez, 35, didn’t want to become a dissident. She was more the technical type, with an interest in computers, and after earning a degree in philology left for Switzerland to study computer science. The strict Cuban authorities gave her permission to travel and return home afterward — which shows that the regime didn’t consider her to be a threat or likely dissident.

After returning home to Havana, however, Yoani set up the magazine Consenso and has since become probably the best-known writer of electronic samizdat in the island nation. She also writes the blog Generation Y, which has earned her several international awards; she wasn’t able to accept them in person as the Cuban authorities have confiscated her passport.

Last year, Yoani was kidnapped by Cuban agents and mentally and physically abused for several hours. But that didn’t stop her from writing, and at the end of February the official Cuban media began to get publicly engaged in her struggle, making the general public aware of her. She has been twice quoted and accused on television and she was once in the state daily Granma.

Sánchez points out that her entire island nation has been virtually cut off from the Internet since the start of the unrest in Libya — most likely because the Castro family is worried that Cubans will start an uprising similar to those in the Arab world — and the following interview was interrupted several times due to disruptions the connectivity.

Q: What is lacking for a revolution similar to the one in Egypt taking place in Cuba?

 

A: In Cuba the situation is most like that in Libya rather than the other Arab countries that are undergoing unrest. Our system and country is also dependent on one charismatic and popular leader.

Q: But Raúl Castro is the complete opposite of his brother. Fidel got all of the charisma genes, leaving nothing for Raúl …

 

A: Of course that is why all Cubans that disagree with the regime secretly wish that “our beloved” El Commandante was not among us because Raúl would find it difficult to keep in charge. The older generation, despite not being satisfied with the regime, still respect Fidel for what he did when he took over. That is why they don’t want to topple him, so as not to disappoint him. I’ll give an example: Grandpa paid for our education; although he is now unintelligible and conservative, he is still our grandpa.

Q: But considering Raúl’s age, it is not impossible that he may die before Fidel. Are they secretly grooming a different heir?

 

A: Ever since the mid-1990s, everyone has had the feeling that Castro is preparing Felipe Ramón Pérez Roque, who started off as Fidel’s personal assistant and worked his way up to minister of foreign affairs. But in 2009, Castro publicly criticised him for loving power too much. This led to Roque’s fall from grace and the public eye.

Q: So who will come after Raúl?

 

A: There are two options being talked about. The first is that a military junta will take power, or, more likely, that Raúl’s daughter Mariela Castro, is getting ready. First, she has held a public position for several years; second, she is endeavoring to be known abroad as a defender of gay rights. This gives her the appearance of a modern person interested in human rights, which makes her more acceptable. I must add that homosexuals in Cuba are still persecuted, despite her efforts to change this.

It is interesting that Castro himself has apologized for his conduct toward homosexuals in the past. As is typical of totalitarian systems, his speech must be part of a strategy, otherwise he wouldn’t say it. In addition, Mariela has one indisputable advantage. Since she is a likeable, “young” (48) woman, it will be much more difficult to attack her directly because she just doesn’t look like a dictator. Despite this, she will inherit all of her uncle’s and father’s power, thus keeping it in the family. This is not communism, it’s nepotism.

Q: Doesn’t that more or less ruin your hopes for a democratic Cuba?

 

A: It’s a good plan as far as the regime’s image abroad is concerned, but it won’t cure our chronic problems. Free education and health care mean little when you have no more than two liters of milk a week for an entire family, or that it takes half a year to find a light bulb and candles are not for sale. Or you have to use the state daily as toilet paper.

In the first decade or two of the path to a communist ‘Eden,’ you can overlook such matters, but after half a century all we have, in comparison to the rest of Latin America, is free education and health care and then half a million state employees lose their jobs, well that is sufficient reason for unrest and a fight for liberty. I’d like to add that if the official figures mention half a million unemployed, the reality is more like 700,000 to 800,000.

Q: A lot of people abroad feel that Cuba has probably the best possible system within Latin America and that its fall would lower the standard of living to that of Honduras or Ecuador.

 

A: I am sure that almost every Cuban would prefer to be at liberty to decide how to earn money, even if it was less, than to carry on living as a thrall to Castro’s nobility.

Q: Isn’t it better to be poor in Cuba than live in the favelas [slums] that are so ubiquitous in Latin America?

 

A: No, because there is always a chance of getting out of a slum. We don’t have that. The former Brazilian president, Lula, came from the slums. So did several other South American leaders. Here it is more like a monarchy: Either you’re part of Castro’s family and their loyal lackeys or you don’t have a chance.

Moreover, Lula managed in just two terms to get 30 million people out of poverty. In 50 years, Castro’s family hasn’t managed to get the 11 million Cubans out of poverty at all. All he’s managed to do is get rich while the rest of us flounder in destitution.

Fabiano Golgo

From: Czech Position

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Cuba: enemy of the Internet

The Cuban regime, more wary of bloggers than traditional dissidents, decided to expand its online presence to combat them. Now that Venezuelan fibre optic cable is available on the island, the authorities have what they need to improve connection speeds and lower costs. There are fewer and fewer excuses for maintaining censorship or keeping the population away from the Web. Are we witnessing signs of a Web Springtime, now that the journalists persecuted during the Black Springtime of March 2003 have all been released from prison?

Fibre optic cable in Cuba: Unprecedented potential for growth?

According to the authorities, nearly 10% of Cuba’s population is connected to the Internet. That does not necessarily mean that they have access to the World Wide Web. Two parallel networks co-exist on the island: the international network and a closely monitored Cuban intranet consisting only of an encyclopaedia, email addresses ending in “.cu” used by universities and government officials – a sort of “Cuban Wikipedia” – and a few government news websites such as Granma.

Outside of hotels, only a few privileged individuals have a special permit to access the international network. Yet even the latter does not escape censorship, which is mainly directed against dissident publications on foreign websites, but has been relaxed to some extent since early February 2011.

The regime does not have the means to set up a systematic filtering system, but it counts on several factors to restrict Internet access: the exorbitant cost of connections – about 1.50 U.S. dollars per hour from the points of access to the state-controlled intranet, 7 U.S. dollars per hour from a hotel to access the international network (even though the average monthly salary is 20 U.S. dollars), and lastly infrastructural problems, particularly slow connections.

These obstacles explain why the number of Internet users and the time spent online remain limited. Most cybernauts try to just read their emails and answer them. They do not have the time to navigate the Internet or surf websites. For years, the regime has been blaming the American embargo for the lack of a good Web connection on the island, claiming that it prevents the country from accessing international networks. That problem is about to be solved, thanks to the ALBA-1 fibre optic undersea cable which has been linking Cuba to Venezuela since February 2011, thereby increasing 3000-fold Cuba’s capacity to connect to the rest of the world. It is scheduled to be put into service in July 2011.

Until then, international network connections will continue to be made via satellite, at immoderate costs.

Theoretically, fiber optic cable should lead to lower Internet access prices and improve connection speeds.

It is unlikely, however, that Internet access will be democratised and made available to the general population.

The authorities are cautious when commenting on this new development. In February 2011, Cuba’s Vice-Minister of Information and Communications, José Luis Perdomo, pointed out that cable “is not a ‘magic wand,’” and that granting Cubans access to the Internet will require a substantial investment in its infrastructures. He also said that there is “no political obstacle” to offering such access. For the time being, this access to the Web will remain reserved for “social use” by institutions, universities and certain categories such as doctors and journalists. He stated: “Our priority is to continue the creation of collective access centers in addition to strengthening the connections in scientific, university and medical research centers.”

Resourcefulness

A genuine black market has been prospering in Cuba in which offers are made to buy or “rent” passwords and codes used by the few individuals and companies whom the incumbent party has cleared for Internet access.

Navigating the Net costs 50 U.S. dollars per month and receiving/sending one email message costs 1 U.S. dollar in some “hacker centres.” Illegal users find it safer to connect only at night.

Some international network connections can be accessed from foreign or private residences.

Certain dissidents tweet by sending SMS via foreign-based accounts, while others insert foreign SIM cards into their cell phones to access the Net. While netizens will stop at nothing to pass on information, it can come at a high cost. Freelance bloggers do not have direct access to their websites, which are not hosted on the island. They are have to rely on friends abroad to publish their articles and posts. They do that by following a well-tested procedure: they prepare their content in advance, copy it onto a USB flash drive, and send it by email from a hotel or other location, because dissidents are more and more frequently denied entry into tourist hotels. USB flash drives, which are also being passed from hand-to-hand, are the new vectors for freedom of speech in Cuba – the local “samzidats.”

Demonising bloggers and social networks: A digital cold war?

In 2009, the regime became wary of the growing popularity of certain bloggers, notably Yoani Sanchez. The latter has been repeatedly assaulted, interrogated and targeted by genuine slander campaigns, while other bloggers, such as Luis Felipe Rojas, have been arrested several times.

Cuban dissident and cyberjournalist Guillermo Fariñas Hernández (“El Coco”),  winner of the 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded by the European Parliament, was arrested three times in less than 48 hours in January 2011. His only wrongdoing is that he has been militating in favour of the right to inform and to circulate news freely.

The legal arsenal used against online opposition to the regime remains particularly harsh and dissuasive. Cuban netizens risk punishment of up to twenty years in prison for posting an article deemed “counter-revolutionary” on an Internet website hosted abroad, and five years for illegally connecting to the international network.

The problem is becoming increasingly urgent as the authorities fear the social networks’ mobilisation power even more after witnessing Tunisian and Egyptian examples of it. Some U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in December 2010 revealed that the Cuban regime is more afraid of bloggers than of “traditional” dissidents.

In a 15 April 2009 telegramme, dissidents were described as forming “a movement as old and out of touch from the lives of ordinary Cubans as the regime itself.” A cable dated 20 December 2009 stressed, to the contrary, that bloggers are “a much more serious threat” to the Cuban government. The United States views the reporting by Cuban netizens of their arrests and mistreatment as an invaluable political tool, because the latter represent “a group which frustrates and scares the Cuban government like no other.” “The bloggers’ mushrooming international popularity and their ability to stay one tech-step ahead of the authorities are causing serious headaches for the regime.” The U.S. diplomat concluded: “We believe that it is the younger generation of ‘non-traditional dissidents’ that is likely to have a greater long-term impact on post-Castro Cuba.”

Another telegram noted that “Younger individuals, including bloggers (…) are much better than traditional dissidents at taking ‘rebellious’ stands with greater popular appeal” – an assessment that Cuban leaders seem to share. Since February 2011, a one-hour or so video has been circulating on the Internet (vimeo.com/19402730) in which an unidentified Cuban expert explains in detail how the American enemy is funding Cuban cyberdissidence.

Using as an example blogger Yoani Sanchez, he asserts that “she is organising a virtual network of mercenaries who are not traditional counter-revolutionaries.” The expert urges that these new forces be neutralised, stressing that “being a blogger is not bad. They have their bloggers and we have ours. We’re going to fight to see which of the two turns out to be stronger.”

Government reprisal: Occupy the field

The authorities are now striving to expand their presence on the Web: an official Cuban bloggers association was formed in 2009. The number of “pro-government” bloggers is said to be constantly rising, and may be as high as several hundred. In February 2011, the Reuters press agency reported that Cuba had some 1,000 “official bloggers.”

Any possible links between the Havana government and hackers who target Cuban websites and blogs hosted abroad, among others, are under heavy scrutiny.

Since the regime’s strategy is to “drown” dissident bloggers in a flood of pro-government bloggers, the government no longer needs to keep such a tight rein on the former, and can afford to make some concessions. Since 9 February, forty-some opposition blogs and Internet pages, among them Yoani Sanchez’s Generación Y, are accessible again from the island for those who can connect to the international network. According to this blogger’s statements to the foreign press, Cuba may owe this breath of fresh air to the 14th Informática - International Convention and Fair, held in Havana from 7 to 11 February. What remains to be seen is whether this deblocking will last.

The authorities’ negative track record with regard to censorship accounts for dissidents’ doubts that the Internet will ever be accessible throughout the island. According to Yoani Sanchez, “the cable optic fibres are already engraved with the name of their owner and its ideology. This undersea connection seems destined more to control us than to link us to the world.” However, with this cable, “it will be more difficult to convince us that we cannot have YouTube, Facebook or Gmail,” she pointed out, specifying that “no one will prevent us from using this cable to do something very different from the plans of those who bought it.”

For the middle or long-term, some people are banking on Chinese-type progress: Web growth for economic reasons, with more access for the population, while maintaining political control. A glimmer of hope remains: Cuba has announced that it wishes to switch from a Windows to a Linux operating system. This initiative may enhance the technical expertise of Cuban IT specialists, who will then be in a better position to circumvent censorship.

From: RSF

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Cuba: Cyberwar? Video Sparks Debate, Anger, Skepticism

A video posted February 1^st on Vimeo features a 52-minute presentation on new information technologies and a “ciberguerra” allegedly being waged on Cuba by the United States government and US-based NGOs. The man delivering the presentation has since been identified as Eduardo Fontes Suárez, a cyber security official at Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior (MININT). Initial reports called this a classified government video that had been leaked, but some bloggers (on and off the island) are questioning this assertion.

La Ciberpolicia en Cuba

You can watch the video here or go directly to: 
La ciber policia en Cuba on Vimeo.

The full transcription in English is available at Translating Cuba.

Posted by Coral Negro, a Vimeo account holder who offers no profile information of any kind, and has posted no other material, the video has ignited an international debate about its origin and its content. An original transcript of the video can be found at Café Fuerte [es], and an English translation can be found at Translating Cuba. The presentation provides a detailed description of US government efforts to establish unauthorized Wi-Fi connection spots on the island, with the help of dissidents and representatives from US-based NGOs, mainly the International Republican Institute. Fontes indicates that Alan Gross, the jailed USAID worker who was arrested in December of 2009 for illegally distributing IT equipment to Cubans, was involved with Washington’s project to establish these hot spots.

He describes bloggers such as Yoani Sánchez as counterrevolutionaries who, with the support of the Spanish and US governments, are attempting to use new technologies in order to spark a popular uprising against the Castro government. He also discusses the Cuban government’s latest plans for ICT use on the island, and the benefits of certain technologies, remarking on Hugo Chávez’s use of Twitter as a political tool.

Penúltimos Días [es], a Cuba-focused blog based in Spain, reposted the video, and soon thereafter a former (and now exiled) high school classmate of Fontes’ identified him and posted photographs of Fontes as a teenager in the late 1980s. On Cuban exile community blogs such as Babalú [es], readers seemed to delight in ridiculing Fontes, calling him a “cíberesbirro” or “cyberthug.” Fontes’ Facebook page has been deactivated since he was identified on Penúltimos Días. His Twitter account remains active, but he has not tweeted since December of 2010.

It is clear that Fontes is a real official of Cuban intelligence. What remains unclear is whether his presentation and the leak were “real” as well.

Regina Coyula, a former employee of the counterintelligence unit at MININT who is now the author of La Mala Letra [es] believes the video is authentic, and has denied another blogger’s accusation that she herself leaked the video. She reasons that the video contains far too much information about the power of ICTs to be a fake. She writes:

[L]a conferencia [es] un tanto didáctica. Así me entero de unidades satelitales wi-fi de alta velocidad como parte de un módulo que incluye blackberries y notebooks destinadas a blogueros…y contrarrevolucionarios tradicionales; me entero de que a través de ese servicio cualquier persona de pronto pudiera tener en su pc el mensaje de estás conectado; [Fontes] reconoce que es peligroso que la gente se conecte por la libre, y admite que nadie beneficiado va a quejarse ni a averiguar.

[T]he conference [is] quite didactic. Through it I learn of high-speed Wi-Fi satellite units as part of a module that includes blackberries and notebooks intended for bloggers…and traditional counterrevolutionaries. I learn that, through that service, any person could suddenly get the “You are connected” message on their PC; [Fontes] recognizes the dangers of people’s freedom of Internet access, and admits that nobody who benefits from this will either complain or inquire about where the connection came from.

Yoani Sánchez [es] was unequivocally certain that much of what Fontes said was untrue. But she wondered whether it was he, or someone above him, who was responsible for this misinformation.

¿Usted es de los que fabrica las mentiras o de los que se cree las mentiras? Me gustaría hacerle esta  pregunta al ponente que despliega una complicada teoría de la conspiración en este video. Si se trata de alguien que sólo transmite un mensaje, entonces la respuesta es sencilla: la falsedad se cuece más arriba y él es apenas un emisario. Pero me temo que parte de lo que expone frente a esos adustos militares –que exhiben una constelación de estrellas en sus uniformes– es de su propia cosecha, se ha gestado en su interior.

Are you one of those who fabricates lies? Or one of those who believes them? I would like to ask this question to the speaker who deploys a complicated conspiracy theory in this video. If it’s someone who is just sending a message, then the answer is simple: the falsehood is concocted higher up and he is just the messenger. But I fear that part of what he is expounding in front of those grim soldiers — with a constellation of stars on their uniforms — is  his own production, cooked up by himself.

Sánchez also pointed out that Fontes' description of social media platforms reflected a limited understanding of their applications. Reinaldo Escobar (who blogs at Desde Aquí), wrote in an article on Diario de Cuba [es] that the content of the presentation had to have been fabricated. He referred specifically to Fontes’ claim that bloggers like Yoani Sánchez (Escobar’s wife) have been “created” and supported by the US government.

Si [Fontes] miente por iniciativa propia de presentarse como…imprescindible ante sus jefes, o si miente cumpliendo estrictas orientaciones de una mano tenebrosa, eso no puedo saberlo. Pero sé que miente. Me consta. La blogosfera alternativa cubana no es una creación del imperialismo norteamericano sino fruto de una conjunción de factores entre los que se destacan el fracaso del sistema socialista, la inconformidad ciudadana, especialmente entre los más jóvenes, y el desarrollo de la tecnología a nivel mundial.

Whether [Fontes] lied on his own initiative, […] wanting to appear talented and indispensable before his bosses, or if he lied to satisfy the strict demands of a dark hand, I can’t tell. But I know he’s lying. I know. The alternative Cuban blogosphere is not a creation of U.S. imperialism, but the fruit of a [combination] of factors among which are the failure of the socialist system, public discontent — especially among young people — and the worldwide development of technology.” [Translation courtesy of Translating Cuba.]

The Cuban Triangle’s [en] Phil Peters believes that the video was created and intentionally released (under the guise of a leak) in order to send a message. He reasons that, unlike a typical leak, the video appeared to have been edited thoroughly, and was conspicuously devoid of information that could harm the Cuban government.

There is nothing in the briefing that is remotely inconvenient to the Cuban government; nothing that compromises an operation or breaks an important secret…[M]uch of the video conveys messages that Havana would probably want to present to international audiences. The cachet of a “leak” from the heart of a communist security apparatus ensures that those messages fly farther and wider than would words on paper.

Whether or not the video is “real,” US officials and IRI have firmly denied Fontes’ claims regarding WiFi connection spots. But regardless of whether it is entirely true or not, the message Fontes communicates here is clearly aligned with recent ICT policy directives of the Cuban government, which have focused closely on the nation’s “ciberguerra” against the United States.

A coincidence?

The Cuban novelist and blogger Zoe Valdés, who now lives in Paris, shares Peters’ contention. It is not a coincidence, she suggests, that the video surfaced at the height of the popular uprising in Egypt, given the critical role of social networks and ICTs in the movement. News from Cairo has prompted many journalists and bloggers to wonder whether, given the gradually increasing number of ICTs in Cuba, Parque Central could become the next Tahrir Square.

Valdés also points to “Por un levantamiento popular en Cuba,” a Facebook group created last week by members of the Cuban exile community in Spain, urging Cubans to follow the example of Egypt and rise up against the Castro government.

Valdés writes that while this is troubling, she believes that the Cuban government chooses to openly condemn bloggers because they are an easy target.

[E]llos prefieren a disidentes cibernéticos …frente a justicieros callejeros que podrían multiplicarse por miles en mínimo tiempo. Los primeros no son considerados peligrosos, los segundos sí, y mucho. La propia Yoani Sánchez ha declarado que su blog no se ve en Cuba,* así que muy poca gente lee sus crónicas dentro de la isla.
[…]
Ese video, entonces, forma parte de la nueva estrategia del raulismo light, ignorar a los que son realmente dañinos a la dictadura ha sido siempre la elección de los castristas. Ellos saben que mencionar es reconocer, y que ignorar es desaparecer, fulminar, borrar.

They prefer cybernetic dissidents to those who fight for justice in the streets, who can multiply by miles in little time. The first group is not considered dangerous, the second is, and very much so. Yoani Sánchez herself has declared that she can't see her blog within Cuba,* so few people read her chronicles on the island.

[…] That video, then, forms part of the new raulismo light strategy. Ignoring those who are truly harmful to the dictatorship has always been the way of Castrists. They know that to mention is to recognize, and that to ignore is to disappear, to fulminate, to erase.

Her point about “raulismo light” does well to elucidate important intricacies in how Cuban state intelligence works. But while Valdés implies that there lies a clear distinction between dissidents in virtual and real space, the powerful online presence of dissident groups like the Damas de Blanco and the OZT Yo Rechazo movements disprove this—they demonstrate how this distinction is increasingly blurry, if not indecipherable.

In sum, it seems that whether or not the presentation was “real,” and whether or not it was a true leak, the video (if not entirely truthful) gives the world a rare, intimate window into the thinking and dialogue on ICTs and blogging that is happening within Cuban intelligence. However uncertain its origins, it holds valuable information for all those who have a stake in the future of ICTs in Cuba.

*Sánchez's blog became accessible in Cuba on February 8, 2011.

By Ellery Biddle

From: Global Voices

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Cuba fights latest U.S. "invasion" — on the Internet

It is 50 years since the last U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba but the island's communist leaders believe another one has begun — not on the shores of the Bay of Pigs as in 1961, but in the virtual world of the Internet.

Cuba fears "cyberdissidents" could use Twitter, Facebook and other online social networks to undermine the government. Its concern has taken on added significance since the same communication tools were used by protesters in Egypt to help topple longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak last week.

A leaked video recently posted on the web shows a Cuban intelligence Internet expert telling interior ministry officials that the new cyber opposition is a more serious threat than the island's traditional dissidents.

The authorities are worried about people like Claudia Cadelo, a frail-looking 27-year teacher of French who created Octavo Cerco, one of about 30 blogs critical of the government written inside Cuba.

"Social networks have become a new weapon for civil society," she told Reuters in an interview. "They don't want the social networks to spread because they are aware of the danger that poses to a totalitarian government which hides the truth from its people.".

Given Cuba's low rate of Internet connectivity, the tweets Cadelo types into her mobile phone don't reach many Cubans. But that could change as Cuba gains access to broadband Internet and mulls the pros and cons of granting wider access.

After initially blocking public access to some critical websites, the Cuban government has switched strategy and unleashed an anti-dissident counter-attack by a legion of some 1,000 pro-government "revolutionary" bloggers.

From his office in the headquarters of Cuba's state telephone company ETECSA, journalist and blogger Manuel Henriquez is on the front lines of that official offensive.

"There is evidently an intention to attack Cuba through the Internet. And of course Cuba has the right to defend itself," said the 47-year-old author of the blog Cambios en Cuba.

"It is an old war and this is its latest expression. What these (opposition) bloggers are looking for is to demonize the country, create an image of a repression that doesn't exist and later on allows justifying laws and blockades."

Bloggers like Henriquez take aim at Cuba's cyberdissidents, led by prominent critic Yoani Sanchez and her Generacion Y blog. They accuse the critics of being financed by the U.S. government, Cuba's ideological foe, and often post damaging rumours about their personal lives.

LOW CONNECTIVITY

Experts say the Internet is offering Cuban dissidents unprecedented room for political debate, but that the transforming potential of Twitter and other social networks depends heavily on connectivity levels.

In Tunisia, the cradle of recent protests that have rocked the Arab world, 19 per cent of the population was on Facebook, but Internet access in Cuba is restricted by the government.

"It's worth asking what per cent of Cubans have regular Internet access. Access to mobile phones. If those numbers are low, it's unlikely these are the most effective organizing channels," said Ethan Zuckerman, senior researcher at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Wilfredo Cancio, a Cuban exile journalist who publishes a Cuban affairs web site Cafe Fuerte in Miami sees a "Cold War" mentality in the Cuban government's declared digital offensive against cyber opponents.

"I think the government is betting on winning this battle, above all from the control perspective," he said.

Cuba, the Caribbean's biggest island, has a population of 11 million, and last reported 1.6 million people online, but they mostly only have access to a government-sanctioned intranet that does not permit links to Twitter or Facebook.

Mobile telephony has grown dramatically since it was legalized three years ago, but costs are high for ordinary Cubans. Cadelo says she pays the equivalent of $1 every time she tweets by sending a text message to a number in Britain.

A fiber-optic submarine cable hooking Cuba to its socialist ally Venezuela could soon increase the island's data transfer speed by 3,000 times.

Cuba's government says the long-standing U.S. embargo has been the main obstacle to Internet penetration and that there are no "political obstacles" to opening up the Internet to the broader public. But they say for the time being they cannot afford to install the needed wider infrastructure.

Ted Henken, a Cuba analyst at City University of New York, thinks Cuban authorities may try to emulate the Chinese model of opening up the Internet while controlling information flow.

"Using these technologies to spark antigovernment protests is impossible now given the low penetration, access and use . . . But this is likely to change in the future as the government tries to benefit economically from broadband," he said.

On the leaked government video, the Cuban Internet expert said the United States was smuggling satellite phones into Cuba to provide dissidents with unrestricted access to the web.

Alan Gross, a U.S. government subcontractor held in Havana and accused of introducing such devices into Cuba, is awaiting trial and faces up to 20 years in jail on charges of "crimes against the security of the state."

In the video, the Cuban official called Gross a "mercenary", comparing him to the CIA-backed Cuban exiles who invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961.

Henriquez, the pro-government blogger, says the United States is trying to export a cyber rebellion model promoted in places like Iran. "But it isn't going to work whether there is Internet or not. A Twitter message isn't itself a reason to mobilize," he said.

Cadelo, however, says it is just a matter of time. "The Internet is going to get to the people. They can't avoid that. A war against the Internet is a lost war," she said.

Esteban Israel

From: The Gazette

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Cuba "fears Internet, social media"

Cuba fears the United States is encouraging dissent through social media such as Facebook and Twitter with the goal of toppling the government, according to the video of what appears a meeting of Cuban officials posted on websites this week.

The 50-minute video apparently is a presentation given by an Internet expert to officials of Cuba's Interior Ministry last June.

A link to the video at http://vimeo.com/19402730 was posted on several blogs, including that of Cuban anti-government blogger Yoani Sanchez, and on the website of the Miami Herald. It is not known how the video was obtained.

The expert, whose identity is not disclosed, told the officials the United States is promoting use of Facebook and Twitter to foment dissent similar to ways it was used in insurrections in the Ukraine in 2004 and in Iran in 2010.

He also said the US government is financing the introduction into Cuba of satellite communications equipment to create secret points of WiFi access.

In communist-led Cuba, Internet access is limited and content largely controlled by the government.

The lecturer mentioned US aid contractor Alan Gross, who has been detained since December 2009 on suspicions he illegally supplied satellite phones to Jewish groups for Internet access. Gross is described in the video as a “mercenary.”

“The idea is to create a technological platform away from control of Cuban authorities that permits the free flow of communication between Cuban citizens selected by (Cuban enemies) and the world,” he said.

Cuba said on Friday that Gross, 61, will face trial soon on charges of crimes against the security of the state and that prosecutors would seek a 20-year sentence in the case that has been a stumbling block for US-Cuba relations.

The lecturer said the US-supplied satellite equipment seeks to spread the voice of a new wave of anti-government bloggers such as Sanchez.

“A virtual network of mercenaries is organizing that are not the traditional counter-revolution. We are talking about young people, people who can have an attractive discourse, young people who hang out with our children and our brothers,” the expert said.

He said the United States is dedicating more money to finance “cyber dissidents” than to the island's traditional opponents.

According to a US State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks and published in December, Washington is losing confidence in the older dissidents and giving more credence to bloggers and intellectuals.

In the video, the expert said Cuba should try to neutralise the dissident bloggers by countering with its own.

“Being a blogger is not bad. They have their bloggers and we have ours. We're going to fight to see which of the two turns out stronger,” he said.

by Esteban Israel

From: Independent Online

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The Tunisian Revolution As Seen By Cuba

Game over for Ali. Who's next?

The Tunisian Revolution did not echo only in the Arab world, but also in Latin America. After the fall of the former Tunisian President Ben Ali, the Mexican paper "La Mañana" wrote that this was a "clear message to the other authoritarian leaders in the world: a dictator fell and sooner or later the other dictators will also follow the same fate. The op-ed stresses that regimes such as the one in La Havana are now feeling uncertain, and anxious that similar protests could also explode in their countries. Cuban dissidents, too, see many similarities, especially between the Castro regime, in power for more the fifty years, and the dictatorship in Tunisia, which for 23 years had been pillaging the country.

In Tunisia, as in Cuba, there are more than a million exiled people, and a frustrated youth with high-education, but no employment. In Tunisia, there are pockets of real poverty, particularly in the interior regions, such as Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine, where the revolt started. The unemployment rate is 14.7%, for a population of ten and a half million. Further, salaries for manual labor are unbearably low: having a job does not always avoid having a miserable life.

In Cuba, with a population similar to Tunisia's -- around 11 million, -- an administrative chaos reigns. Even though, as the Associated Press reports, unemployment is minuscule -- it has not risen above 3% in eight years -- the official data ignore "thousands of Cubans who are not looking for jobs that pay monthly salaries worth only $20 a month on average."

Tunisia was a police state, as Cuba still is. During Ben Ali's regime, policemen in plain clothes and network of spies were everywhere. Outside a supermarket in Tunis, you could even see a shoeshine pull out a big walkie-talkie, like those in use with the police, and talk to somebody clearly not his wife. After a while, in Tunisia, you are under the impression that Big Brother is always watching you.

In Cuba, it is the same. As reported on the State Department website: "Cuba is a totalitarian police state which relies on repressive methods to maintain control. These methods include intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Cuban citizens and foreign visitors."

Further, in Tunisia, as in any dictatorship, public order was implemented with force -- all too often excessive force - without taking into account torture practices used behind closed doors and in prisons, as many witnesses have recounted during the last few days. Once, you could even seen a beggar without legs being harshly taken away, and the person who accompanied him being repeatedly punched in the head. Such unnecessary violence was a standard practice.

In Cuba, Human Rights Watch reports, conditions in prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture. The dissident website Cubanet writes that "day and night, the screams of tormented women [in prison] in panic and desperation who cry for God's mercy fall upon the deaf ears of prison authorities. They are confined to narrow cells with no sunlight called 'drawers' that have cement beds, a hole on the ground for their bodily needs, and are infested with a multitude of rodents, roaches, and other insects".

Tunisia, like Cuba, was also a country with no freedom of press. One of the main dailies, in French, La Presse, contained only a list of presidential activities and praise and applauses for the regime's personalities. Even the foreign press was kept under control. There was also the problem of corruption -- that does not exempt the Socialist Cuba. In Tunisia, not only there was a rampant corruption from the members of the government-for-life, but even the President's family was one of the main actors in robbing the country. The President's wife, Leila Trabelsi, fled Tunisia after having taken 1.5 tons of gold from the Central Bank; and her family had been borrowing money from the bank at an interest of 0.25 per thousand (not per cent, which would already be negligible, but per thousand).

The only difference from Cuba is that Tunisia was considered by many Western governments as a "moderate" country, seen as a buttress against Islamism. Although Ben Ali himself used religion to give credibility to his regime, under his dictatorship Islamism grew as it represented the only real and strong opposition. Cuba instead lives under an embargo.

In the meantime, while the Tunisians are still fighting for their freedoms, hoping that the future will not be uncertain, in Cuba the opponents to the regime write that the "Jasmine Revolution" has renewed their hopes.

This new hope is why the Cuban government pretends that almost nothing has happened in Tunisia: it fears similar protests. The media outlet, Diario de Cuba, writes that every year Ben Ali would send messages to La Havana to congratulate it for the anniversary of its triumphant Revolución. Even this year, in the midst of the protests, on January 6, Ben Ali expressed his desire to serve the interests of these two friendly countries. However, "there was not even one line in the Cuban press on the fall of the 'friend' Ben Ali. And until now, we could not enjoy one of those farsighted 'reflections'[1] by Fidel Castro illustrating the subject. What a pity!"

[1] Op-eds that the Cuban leader writes almost weekly, under the title Reflexiones de Fidel

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

From: Hudson New York

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Yoani Sánchez meets Julia Styles

The net equals People 2 People Power and it brought together two women who might otherwise have never heard of each other.

One of them is Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez.

In 2008, “On a recent morning”, she “took a deep breath and gathered her nerve for an undercover mission: posting an Internet chronicle about life in Fidel Castro’s Cuba,” p2pnet quoted the Wall Street Journal as saying, going on:

“To get around Cuba’s restrictions on Web access, the waif-like 32-year-old posed as a tourist to slip into an Internet cafe in one of the city’s luxury hotels, which normally bar Cubans. Dressed in gray surf shorts, T-shirt and lime-green espadrilles, she strode toward a guard at the hotel’s threshold and flashed a wide smile. The guard, a towering man with a shaved head, stepped aside.

” I think I’m able to do this because I look so harmless,’ says Ms. Sánchez, who says she is sometimes mistaken for a teenager. Once inside the cafe, she attached a flash memory drive to the hotel computer and, in quick, intense movements, uploaded her material. Time matters: The $3 she paid for a half-hour is nearly a week’s wage for many Cubans.”

Named by Time as one of the top 100 most influential people, she was awarded the Ortega and Gasset prize for digital journalism, one of Spain`s top journalism awards, said the Havana Journal, going on:

“Spanish newspaper El Pais, which awards the prize annually, said Sanchez won it for her ’shrewdness’ in overcoming hurdles to freedom of expression in Cuba, her ‘vivacious’ style and her drive to join the ‘global space of citizen journalism’.”

The other is American actress Julia Stiles of the The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy (among others) fame.

“The snack bar on 13th between F and G — that afternoon on December — is full of security agents and admirers”, writes Yoani in her Generation Y blog, continuing:

The first are the ones who follow this restless blogger, like a tragicomic troupe that dances around my body, my house; the second pursued the radiant face of the actress Julia Stiles, with her laugh from the full-color big screen. Enormous confusion, when they watched the girl who plays the role of Nicky Parsons sitting at the same table with the author of Generation Y, and chatting affectionately. But yes, the famous New Yorker reads my virtual diary, is interested in scratching below the surface of the picture postcard images that export our reality. She barely wanted to talk about herself, although I wanted to know more about her professional life, or even stoop to ask for an autograph.

Julia and I are of that generation of American and Cubans who have been separated and faced with the rhetoric far from our own desires. Descendants of the Montagues and Capulets who tried to pass on to us their grudges and hatreds. But looking objectively, they didn’t manage it, and the result has been quite the opposite. Close, but separated, similar and yet set at odds, like many young people from here and from there we are tired of this outdated “cold war” and its consequences in our lives. So the meeting with Julia had the character of a reconciliation, as if in the middle of combat two opponents approach each other and begin feel each other out, to embrace.

No one in the cafeteria heard the noise of arms being tossed aside, not even those who were there to watch us saw how we dismantled the walls separating us. In the end, the smiling girl from the movies and the girl from Havana who should have been the “New Man” hugged each other and said, “See you later.” Each went to her own side, returned to her life, in front of the cameras or in front of the keyboard, in the Big Apple or in a Yugoslav-model building.

“But since that afternoon, whenever I hear the television seething against our neighbors to the north, I recall Julia, and it is a kind of therapy to remember her laugh and the little armistice we managed that da”, adds Yoani on Generation Y.

From: P2P

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The prison that calls itself a country

Number of prisons per province in Cuba. In total, about 550.

In December, when the European Parliament awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Cuban independent journalist and longtime protester of the Castros' repression of thought, Guillermo Farinas, the Cuban dictatorship, as is done by the rulers of China, barred him from leaving the country to accept the award.

In his acceptance speech by video, Farinas, characteristically forthright, said: "In the minds of Cuba's current rulers, we Cuban citizens are just like the slaves from whom I am descended, kidnapped in Africa and brought to the Americas by force. For me or any other ordinary citizen to be able to travel abroad, I need a Carta de Libertad, that is a Freedom Card, just as the slaves did, only today it is called a Carta Blanca, a White Card."

His reference to the "white" card should also be a reminder of the long-imbedded racial discrimination against black Cubans by the Castro Revolution. In December 2009, I reported on the "Statement of Conscience by African-Americans" the month before by 60 prominent black Americans, including Cornel West, condemning the partnership of Jim Crow with the Cuban regime.

I have seen no further mention of that long-delayed protest from the actual signers of the declaration of conscience, and from hardly anyone else. Is this a self-imposed gag rule? I welcome any information about this strange silence, including from the Congressional Black Caucus.

Guillermo Farinas would have welcomed, I expect, some support from those prominent black Americans, and others of us. He thanked the European Parliament "for not abandoning the Cuban people in these more than 50 years of the struggle for democracy."

But he has been abandoned – despite his hunger strikes against the imprisonment of independent Cuban librarians, among other dissenters – by the American Library Association, which has yet to demand the release of these, among the other Castros' prisoners of conscience.

As Farinas delivered his acceptance speech, an empty chair draped in a Cuban flag was placed on the European Parliament stage.

Amnesty International has not abandoned him or any of the other Cubans treated like ungrateful slaves. Last summer, it called world attention to the harassment of Reina Luisa Tamayo, "who takes to the streets each Sunday with a small group of relatives to honor her son Orlando Zapta Tamayo who died Feb. 23 after refusing food and water for months."

Imprisoned since 2003 for "disrespecting authority," among other charges, Tamayo "became the first Cuban opposition leader in nearly 40 years to die after a hunger strike – an incident decried by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and European leaders" (Associated Press, Aug. 17, 2010, and foxnews.com).

Reina Luisa Tamayo told Amnesty "that pro-government mobs surrounded her house in the eastern Cuban city of Banes on Sunday and prevented her, her family and friends from marching and attending Roman Catholic Mass. She said Cuban security forces kept other women who planned to march from leaving their homes."

Previously, a typical Castro regime warning was delivered to this besieged mother, as reported by Amnesty International: "On Aug. 8, a mob blocked (Tamayo's) path and beat relatives and friends who were marching – while police nearby failed to act. She said six loudspeakers has been installed near her house, used to shout insults against her and the Ladies in White, a Havana support group for wives and mother of political prisoners."

Has Secretary of State Clinton informed President Obama of the ruthless subjugation of liberty-starved Cubans that led to Guillermo Farinas receiving the Sakharov Prize? Does he care that in 2005 this human-rights prize was awarded to the Ladies in White in Cuba and – dig this – in 2002 to dissenter Oswaldo Paya?

A leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and several times nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Paya founded the still-continuing Varela Project aimed at establishing by referendum such scandalous heresies as freedom of press and religion and free elections. The only time I met the still-idolized-by-many Che Guevara (at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations), he professed to understand no English and was accompanied by a translator. As I asked him if he could conceive there ever being free elections in Cuba. Guevara, not waiting for the translator, broke into derisive laughter.

Last year, the Latin American Democratic Bridge Network awarded its first Prize for Democratic Openness to the doggedly surviving Varela Project (catholicnewsagency.com, May 20, 2010, reported again on CNA, Jan. 12, 2011). Because such freedom warriors as Oswaldo Paya do not give up, resistance is rising in Castroland.

The most accurate reports on Cuba come from Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal. On Dec. 27, she told those of us who care: "A new generation of angry, young Cubans now vents on blogs and through music, mocking the old man and his ruthless little brother. On Nov. 28, in the city of Santa Clara, hundreds of students launched a spontaneous protest when they were denied access to a televised soccer match they had paid to watch.

"What began as a demand for refunds soon turned to shouts of 'freedom,' 'down with Fidel' and 'down with socialism.'" These seeds may yet bring revolutionary liberty to Cubans. O'Grady provides more of the context:

Michael Moore notwithstanding, she writes that "Food, water, transportation, access to health care, electricity, soap and toilet paper are all hard to come by. ... The government tries to put the lid on through repression. But in private, among Cubans there are no limits to the derision of the brothers Castro."

On Nov. 28, 2007, Laura Bush held a video conference with members of the independent library movement with whom she expressed solidarity (Friends of Cuban Libraries). Your turn, Michelle Obama. President Obama has eased travel restrictions to – and the sending of money to Cubans – with restrictions, while calling for the return of freedom to Cubans. What will happen to any of these American travelers if they demand to see any prisoners of conscience?

Nat Hentoff

From: WorldNetDaily


Trapped in Castro's gulag and lived to tell about it – check out Armando Valladares' story of 20 years under dictator's thumb: "Against All Hope"

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Yoani Sánchez Wins CEPOS Freedom Award

Yoani Sánchez has been denied the right to travel several times

NEW YORK (November 16, 2010) – The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is pleased to announce that 2010 Oslo Freedom Forum speaker and Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez was awarded the inaugural CEPOS Freedom Award, in the amount of $50,000, by the independent Danish think tank, CEPOS. Sánchez, author of the world-renowned blog Generación Y, was nominated for the award by HRF President Thor Halvorssen.

The Freedom Award is granted to individuals who demonstrate a principled and steadfast commitment to the values and ideas of individual freedom and basic human rights.

“CEPOS could not have selected a more deserving recipient for this prize,” said Halvorssen. “Sánchez is a remarkable woman who has repeatedly overcome great obstacles and risked daunting consequences to make her voice heard, despite a dictatorship that systematically strangles freedom of expression.”

Through her blog, Sánchez provides a window into the hard-hitting reality of everyday life in Cuba. Her elegant and thoughtful criticism of the totalitarian state has earned her the 2008 Ortega y Gasset Prize for Journalism and the 2009 Maria Moors Cabot Prize. She was named one of Time magazine’s "100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2008, and was selected as a 2010 World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute.

“Despite the huge personal costs, Yoani Sánchez has shown amazing courage by expressing her honest and personal opinion of the society she currently lives in. Single-handedly and at great personal expense, she has managed to keep focus on one of the world’s most suffocating dictatorships. CEPOS wishes to show admiration of her courage and dedication by awarding her this prize,” said CEPOS Director Martin Ågerup.

CEPOS has invited Sánchez to receive the Freedom Award at a ceremony in Copenhagen in the near future.

“We hope that the Cuban government will recognize her right to travel to Denmark to receive the prize in person,” stated Halvorssen.

From: HRF

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Cuba’s new ‘blogger-in-chief’

Cubans line up in front of a Havana Internet Café
on Obispo street in Old Havana.

Fidel Castro has gone from Cuba’s commander in chief to its de facto “blogger-in-chief,” posting constant opinion columns online, singing the praises of the internet age, even hailing Wikileaks and sites like it as the common man’s tool to greater worldwide transparency.

Now, if only his fellow Cubans could get in on the cyber-party.

Less than 3 percent of islanders used the internet at least once over the past year and only about 6 percent used email, according to a nationwide survey released Thursday by the state-run National Office of Statistics.
Cuba has long published annual statistics on its internet and cell phone users. But the level of detail contained in this survey had not been made public before – and it revealed a country astoundingly behind the technological times.

Just 2.9 percent of survey responders said they had used the internet in the past 12 months, and the majority of those did so at work or school – not from home. Cuba only legalised the sale of computers to the general public in 2008, though they were, and still are, widely available on the black market.

The tally paints a far bleaker picture than the statistics office’s annual report on connectivity, which found that Cuba had 1.6 million internet users last year. But even that is far below internet access in any other country in Latin America, according to international surveys.

Statistics officials based their study on interviews with 38,000 households across the island from February to April. The office did not say whether the survey was done in person or over the phone, and it listed the margin of error only as less than five percentage points.

It was not clear how many Cubans themselves would see the statistics, however, since they were posted on the agency’s website.

The communist government severely limits Web access, but says it has no choice given that Washington’s 48-year-old embargo doesn’t allow Cuba to access US service providers located close by. Instead, the island must rely on slow and costly Internet via satellite from Europe and other faraway locales.

Meanwhile, authorities block blogs that are critical of the government as well as other pages containing content that is considered counter to Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has promised to lay a fibre-optic cable from his country to Cuba to improve connectivity here, but those plans have been stalled for years.

Of those surveyed by the National Office of Statistics, only 5.8 percent said they use e-mail. The survey did not say how often.

Ordinary Cubans can join an islandwide network that allows them to send and receive international e-mail, but lines are long at youth clubs, post offices and the few Internet cafes that provide access.

The survey also found that just 2.6 percent of respondents regularly use cell phones, despite the government’s dramatic lifting of bans on them two years ago. That was slightly higher than the 2.5 percent who said they own cell phones or have been issued them for work _ meaning some are using phones that belong to relatives, friends or neighbours.

Those percentages are substantially lower than previously released figures, with the state-controlled telecommunications monopoly reporting in July that more than 1 million cell phone lines were in use nationwide. Cuba has a population of 11.2 million people.

Mobile phones in Cuba had been prohibited for all but tourists and foreigners, some government employees, business officials and academics. But in April 2008, just two months after he succeeded his brother as president, Raul Castro authorized their sale to all who could afford them.

From:  Updated News

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Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez is Named IPI’s 60th and Final World Press Freedom Hero

Blogger "provides a glimpse into what is otherwise a closed world": IPI Interim Director

The International Press Institute today declared Cuban blogger Yoani Maria Sanchez Cordero its 60th World Press Freedom Hero.

Sanchez’s blog, Generation Y, is an acerbic critique of life in Cuba, and a telling reminder to the world of the restraints on free speech and expression on the Caribbean island.

Sanchez, a graduate of Havana University, left Cuba for Switzerland in 2002, but returned two years later. On her return, she set up, along with a group of other Cubans, the magazine “Consenso” as a forum for reflection and debate.

In 2007, spurred by what she saw as a growing repressive climate in her homeland, she launched her blog, Generation Y. Composed of reflections on daily life, politics and culture in Castro’s Cuba, the blog today boasts a readership of more than a million.

In early 2008, Sanchez reported that the site may have been targeted by government censors. In April 2008, the site became unavailable in Cuba.

Since then, Sanchez has resorted to extreme and creative measures to keep her blog alive. In a country where internet access is severely restricted and prohibitively expensive, Sanchez often poses as a tourist to access the internet, emailing her entries to friends outside the country who then publish them online.

Sanchez has been refused permission to travel outside of Cuba at least six times in the past two years alone, despite international acclaim for her blog. In 2008, “TIME Magazine” named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people, noting her “feisty dedication to the truth,” and pointing out that “under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech.” She has also received the Ortega y Gasset Prize, Spain’s highest award for digital journalism; the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University; and in 2009, TIME Magazine named her blog among the 25 Best Blogs of 2009.

In her own country, however, Sanchez has repeatedly faced harassment by authorities. In November 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported that she was beaten by a group of unidentified men while on her way to a peaceful protest. According to the article, after the attack, she was dumped “again in the middle of the street, (…) leaving her bruised, scared and sobbing.”

Sanchez says she has not been able to see her own blog since 2007. She reports on her blog that she is under continuous surveillance by state security agents. On 24 May, Sanchez’s blog reported that her name had been announced on Cuba’s state-run Roundtable program, “mixed with concepts such as “cyber-terrorism,” “cyber-commandos” and “media war.”

“To be mentioned in a negative way in the most official program on television is, for any Cuban, the confirmation of her social death,” says Sanchez in her blog.

However, Sanchez refuses to be silenced. “If you are insulted by the mediocre, the opportunists, if you are slandered by the employees of the powerful but dying machinery, take it as a compliment,” she says on her blog.

“Sanchez’s tremendously important work provides a glimpse into what is otherwise a closed world,” said IPI Interim Director Alison Bethel McKenzie. “It is perhaps fitting that our 60th and final World Press Freedom Hero represents a future where the power of the internet can be harnessed to promote free speech. We are proud to know Yoani and to award this prestigious prize to her.”

"Yoani's work has contributed tremendously toward a more wholesome understanding of the reality of life in Cuba. Her clear insights, beautiful use of language and tenacity have distinguished Yoani as an outstanding Caribbean journalist, blogger and citizen. We all look forward to the day conditions in her homeland change so that free expression can be more fully and abundantly facilitated, encouraged and exercised. Our congratulations on her achievement of this prestigious award," said Wesley Gibbings, President of the Association of Caribbean Media Workers, reacting to the announcement of the award.

From: IPI

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