Guillermo Farinas on hunger strike in Cuba

 Guillermo Farinas on hunger strike in Cuba  Cuban Dissidents, Freedom of the Press, Hunger Strike  Comments Off
Feb 142007
 

The Castro cabal won’t let Cubans have unfettered access to the Internet for fear the people might be exposed to new ideas. Or maybe it’s fear that Cubans will use the Internet to expose the Castro regime.

One man is putting his life on the line to fight this: Guillermo Farinas.

Farinas said he launched his most recent strike Jan. 31, 2006, after the government denied Cubans access to the one Internet cafe in Santa Clara. Fellow independent journalists had filed an e-mail report from the cafe, claiming authorities depleted the local blood bank to ship blood to Pakistan with Cuban medical teams. Without the cafe, Farinas and his colleagues can only phone and fax reports abroad, delaying publication.

A recent U.N. report found Cuba had the lowest Internet usage rate in the Americas and among the lowest worldwide: Fewer than one in 50 residents. The Cuban government limits most Cubans only to e-mail accounts or access to a controlled Cuban intranet, denying the World Wide Web to most.

Here’s what makes Farinas’ dissent more remarkable:

As a teenager, he was a member of the communist youth group, then attended a military academy. He served as a military cadet in Angola and the former Soviet Union, he said.

“Remarkable,” that is, until you see why he turned against Castro:

As a cadet guarding leaders’ homes around 1980, Farinas said he saw they had what most Cubans lacked: nice cars and better food. He learned the island’s top brass sometimes attended cockfights, which were supposed to be illegal.

“I saw there was a difference between what they said and what they do,” he said sadly.

What? A difference between what Castro says and does? Say it ain’t so!

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 Posted by at 8:21 pm

A new dawn breaking over Cuba

 A new dawn breaking over Cuba  Cuban Dissidents, Freedom of the Press  Comments Off
Feb 132007
 

Voz de Nuestra Sociedad Civil – Fundación Cubana de Derechos Humanos (Our Civil Society’s Voice – Cuban Human Rights Foundation) has published an online magazine/blog. It’s called Revista Cubana Amanecer (publication in Spanish only; loosely translated the name means “Cuban Magazine: The Dawning “).

We can only hope this is truly the dawning of a new era of freedom for Cuba. Kudos to Babalu Blog, where I got this item from.

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 Posted by at 9:47 pm

Satellite Repression in Cuba

 Satellite Repression in Cuba  Anti-Communism, Freedom of the Press, Media  Comments Off
Feb 102007
 

Satellite dishes are technically illegal in Castro’s Cuba, but the communist government would often turn a blind eye to them just as long as their sheep, er, I mean, their people, would only watch entertainment programming (something about “bread and circuses,” only there isn’t much bread–or much of anything else that’s edible–in Cuba).

But with word recently that the U.S. government is going to beam the oft-blocked TV Martí via commercial TV stations–which can be seen by satellite dish owners–guess what the commie government of Cuba is doing now?

Just two months after the U.S. government announced it would transmit its anti-Castro channel TV Martí on Direct TV — which Cubans can watch using the banned satellite dishes –Cuban authorities appear to be going after the illegal signals with a vengeance.

What is the Castro government so afraid of? After all, isn’t TV Martí nothing more than “propaganda?” If it’s propaganda, don’t you think the educated people of Cuba would know it when they saw it? I mean, come on Fidel and Raul, why can’t Cuba’s people watch it and decide for themselves?

‘The attention they are giving it now gives us confidence that TV Martí is working,” said Alberto Mascaro, chief of staff for the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the government office that runs TV Martí. “If they are so worried about it, that only means one thing: It is working.”

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 Posted by at 4:04 pm

Internet gives Cuba’s dissidents a voice

 Internet gives Cuba’s dissidents a voice  Cuban Dissidents, Freedom of the Press  Comments Off
Feb 072007
 

Even though the Castro dictatorship loves to strangle any opposition in Cuba, thanks to the Internet, dissidents now have a voice that can be heard around the world. Reuters today published an article on this titled Cuban dissidents tap cyberspace from abroad (via Yahoo! News). Here is an excerpt:

Leading Cuban dissidents who are denied access to Internet at home now have their messages on Web sites thanks to the work of exiled friends and family abroad.

Oswaldo Paya, who doggedly began a signature drive for a referendum on civil liberties riding a bicycle five years ago, has no access to e-mail.

But his Web site (www.oswaldopaya.org, site is mostly in Spanish) was launched last month by relatives in Madrid. The site has Paya’s statements and news about the Varela Project, a petition that was rejected by the government despite its 25,000 signatures.

“We have to do it from outside Cuba because we can’t here,” said Paya, winner of Europe’s 2002 Andrei Sakharov prize for human rights, on Wednesday. “We want to express our point of view, which we cannot do here due to the lack of freedom.”

Thank God for the Internet. Even Castro can’t put this genie back into its bottle.

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 Posted by at 7:50 pm

Attacks on the press in Cuba in 2006

 Attacks on the press in Cuba in 2006  Freedom of the Press  Comments Off
Feb 052007
 

CubaNet posted on its website today a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on abuses of the press in Cuba during 2006. The report notes that, despite the news interest in Castro’s infamous intestinal illness, foreign journalists were denied entry into Cuba as the communist government classified Castro’s medical condition as a state secret:

Foreign journalists flocked to Cuba to report on one of the year’s top stories, but many, including Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, were rebuffed, ostensibly because they did not have proper visas. CPJ documented at least 10 cases in which the government barred entry to foreign journalists carrying tourist visas. Under Cuban immigration law, foreign reporters must apply for specialized journalist visas through Cuban embassies abroad. CPJ research shows that Cuban officials have historically granted visas to foreign journalists selectively, excluding those from media outlets deemed unfriendly. Cuban law further specifies that foreign journalists who travel to the country on a tourist visa “should abstain from practicing journalism.”


The government also canceled the visas of at least four foreign journalists who had received approval to travel to Havana, according to CPJ research. Several Reuters reporters who managed to get into the country on tourist visas were told to leave. And Ginger Thompson, a reporter for The New York Times, was tracked down and expelled after her paper published a non-byline story from Havana. The Miami Herald succeeded in getting some of its reporters into Cuba on tourist visas. They went undetected for several weeks, filing stories that surveyed Cubans about their thoughts on the transfer of power and the nation’s future.

The CubaNet story goes on to talk about how independent Cuban journalists are jailed or otherwise mistreated by the Castro regime, earning it a spot among the top 10 most censored countries in the world, according to CPJ.

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 Posted by at 7:29 pm
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