Cuba Stifles Blog Freedom. Again.

La Bloguera Yoani Sanchez

Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez, the 2008 Gasset y Ortega Prize winner for digital journalism, and her husband, Reynaldo Escobar, have been forbidden by the Cuban government from attending a blogger conference in Cuba.

Join me 90 miles South of Miami.

AP reports:

Police have prohibited Cuba's most prominent blogger from attending an independent cyber-workshop and warned that her activities ran afoul of the law, her husband said Friday.

Yoani Sanchez and husband and fellow blogger Reynaldo Escobar were summoned separately Wednesday to a police station near their apartment in Havana's Vedado district and reprimanded, Escobar said in a telephone interview.

Authorities told the couple they could not travel to the western province of Pinar del Rio for a two-day blogger's workshop scheduled to begin Friday night.

"We aren't attending the inauguration of the workshop, which has not been suspended. We've just changed the dynamic of how we are meeting," said Escobar, without elaborating.

You can read about the "reprimand" at Generacion Y, Sanchez's blog (in Spanish, but there's a rough translation feature), but on Friday the blog was "blocked" from Cuban readers.

Is Cuba loosening up its restraint of free speech? Hardly.

The Communications Ministry put into effect a law this week that instructs the island's Internet providers to "prevent access to sites where the content is contrary to social interests, morals or good custom, as well as the use of applications that affect the integrity or security of the State."

Escobar said the police suggested Cuba was especially sensitive to criticism as it struggles to recover from the effects of three storms that hit in less than two months this hurricane season, causing more than $10 billion in damage.

Asked if Cuba could be in the midst of a cyber-crackdown, he said, "I don't know how far they will go."

"For dissidents who traditionally have been surrounded, things have gotten stricter," Escobar said, referring to a small group of activists who dare criticize the island's single-party system.

This isn't the first time Cuba's cracked down on Yoani Sanchez. As I wrote back in May, 2008, Cuba wouldn't let Sanchez travel to Spain to collect the Ortega y Gasset prize. Back then, I asked questions that are doubly applicable today and which I now repeat:

...there hasn't been much of an uproar, or support in Blogtopia for her right to travel or for her right to express herself without being penalized or calling for her to be allowed to leave Cuba long enough to visit Spain.

Why is that? What exactly does it take to have bloggers advocate for freedom of expression across the entire Internet? When are we going to understand the connections between all of us in the typing class? When are we going to support freedom of speech, even if we don't agree with the politics or content of what is being written?

I'm asking because I remember Martin Niemoeller.

Sanchez's blog gets about 1 million hits a month. My little blog gets fewer than 1,000. And Sanchez puts hers up traveling from library to library for Internet access.

Surely there is something we can think of that will show our solidarity with her full right to express herself.

Raul Castro: Let Yoani Sanchez Go To Spain

Yoani Sanchez

You might find it odd that this blog, with its minuscule readership of less than 50 visitors a day, would think it could send a message to the President of Cuba, but, that's how it is on the Internet. Anybody can talk to anyone else, and Yoani Sanchez can talk to thousands of people in Cuba every day with her blog Generacion Y.

Generacion Y explains itself:

Generatión Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that start or contain a "Y". Born in the Cuba of the 70s and the 80s, marked by the "schools to the countryside", the Russian cartoons, the illegal exits and the frustration. So, an invitation goes especially to Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others that drag their Ys, to read me and write back.

What's the blog about?

... 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. The pieces she has been clandestinely sending out from Internet cafés—while posing as a tourist—are often funny, elegantly written and poignant. Her subjects have included the shortage of lemons, the turgid proceedings of the Cuban parliament and the slowness of meaningful reforms by Raúl Castro.

The problem isn't the blog. It's more concrete. It's getting her from Cuba to Spain so she can be given the Ortega y Gasset Award. The details:

The Cuban government has set up obstacles for Yoani Sánchez, creator of the blog Generación Y and winner of the EL PAÍS-issued Ortega y Gasset Journalism Prize, in her efforts to reach Spain. On the eve of the ceremony where she should be receiving her prize – at Madrid's Circulo de Bellas Artes - the blogger has still not been given permission by the Cuban government to leave the island.

Via telephone from Havana yesterday, Sánchez said she was "pessimistic" but was still clinging to the thread of hope that she could still technically travel to Madrid if she received permission today. "I haven’t received any answer from the authorities; and the case is being held up," she explained, adding: "Cuban bureaucracy is very cryptic," making it impossible to know what the next step will be. "I had a flight last Saturday, but I missed it because I couldn’t get an answer from the authorities, so I moved the flight to [today]. I have still not been given an answer and I am pessimistic but will keep hoping until the last minute."

Sanchez believes that her case would be the "perfect test" to see if the opening up announced by Raúl Castro is real or just an empty declaration. Despite the fact that her blog has received a lot of attention outside of Cuba, Sanchez has never left the island to promote it or receive a prize. "Now we will see if something is really changing or not," she said.

You can read Generacion Y, which is reporting on whether Yoani will be allowed to leave. The blog hasn't been taken down in part because it's on a German server.

I'd love to see Raul Castro loosen control on the Wonder Island enough for Yoani Sanchez to go to Spain and collect her prize. That would be a signal to Cuba and the rest of the world that restrictions were actually being lifted, that freedom of speech was slowly being granted.

Yoani Sanchez Receives Prize In Absentia

Well, to no one's surprise, Cuba wouldn't relent and permit Yoani Sanchez to travel to Spain to receive the Ortega y Gasset prize, despite my post urging Raul Castro to permit her to go.

AP reports:

A Cuban woman who gained worldwide acclaim for a blog that offers stinging criticism of the Communist regime was honored Wednesday with a Spanish journalism award — in absentia.

Cuban authorities did not approve Yoani Sanchez's request to travel to Madrid for the award ceremony. But the 32-year-old woman was still able to make some points.

"Nothing of what I have written in these 13 months speaks as loudly as my absence from this ceremony," Sanchez said in a tape recording.

She said the fact she had to address the group through a recording was "the clearest evidence of the defenselessness of the Cuban people with respect to the state."

Meanwhile, her blog receives more than 1 million hits a month (the blog you are now reading receives less than 1 thousand). And it continues to voice opposition to repression in Cuba. It's gotten some attention from Andrew Sullivan, but in general, there hasn't been much of an uproar, or support in Blogtopia for her right to travel or for her right to express herself without being penalized or calling for her to be allowed to leave Cuba long enough to visit Spain.

Why is that? What exactly does it take to have bloggers advocate for freedom of expression across the entire Internet? When are we going to understand the connections between all of us in the typing class? When are we going to support freedom of speech, even if we don't agree with the politics or content of what is being written?

I'm asking because I remember Martin Niemoeller.