US police visit blogger’s home.
October 12, 2007
Secret Cuba
October 12, 2007
When Yoani Sanchez, 32, wants to update her blog about daily life in Cuba, she dresses like a tourist and strides confidently into a Havana hotel, greeting the staff in German. That is because Cubans like Sanchez are not authorized to use hotel Internet connections, which are reserved for foreigners.
In a recent “Generación Y” posting (www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/ ), Sanchez wrote about the abundance of police patrolling the streets of Havana, checking documents and searching bags for black-market merchandise.
She and a handful of other independent bloggers are opening up a crack in the government’s tight control over media and information to give the rest of the world a glimpse of life in a one-party, Communist state.
“We are taking advantage of an unregulated area. They can’t control cyberspace out there,” she said.
Luis Sexto, a columnist for the Communist Youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde, recently posted a blistering attack on state bureaucracy at http://luisexto.blogia.com . “Without public criticism, mistakes will continue to hurt our country,” Sexto wrote last month.
A blogger who goes by the name of “Tension Lia” posts mostly photographs of the ruinous state of Havana’s architectural treasures on a blog called Havanascity (http://havanascity.blogspot.com).
The creator of “My island at midday” told Reuters by e-mail message that the anonymity of the blog has allowed him to say some things that nobody has dared write about.
“Dissent has always been frowned upon,” the author wrote. “Intolerance is still the rule in Cuba, even though Cuban society is starting to adapt to diversity of opinions.”
Source: IHT.
