Cuba threatens satellite crackdown

Cuba threatens satellite crackdown

Thursday 10 August 2006, 7:47 Makka Time, 4:47 GMT

The Cuban government has signalled it will take action against people
using black-market satellite dishes to get news from the United States.

The Communist party newspaper Granma, also the official voice of the
government, reported that the dishes, which provide many Cubans with
Spanish-language TV programmes from the exile bastion of Miami, could be
used by the US government to broadcast subversive information.

The newspaper wrote on Wednesday, nine days after Fidel Castro, the
ailing president, temporarily ceded power to his brother: "They are
fertile ground for those who want to carry out the Bush administration's
plan to destroy the Cuban revolution."

Such articles in Granma usually indicate that action can be expected.

Since Castro handed over to Raul on July 31 after undergoing stomach
surgery, Cubans have been looking for information.

Some had expected word from Daniel Ortega, the former Nicaraguan
president, who arrived in Havana on Saturday to visit his old ally. But
he shed little light on the situation.

US-funded TV and Radio Marti, not available on commercial satellite,
have increased their output of anti-Castro programming; but few Cubans
are believed to have access to them because of successful jamming by the
Cuban government.

There may be as many as 10,000 illegal TV satellite dishes in Cuba -
each one linked to perhaps hundreds of televisions by cables their
owners snake over rooftops and between buildings, charging other users
$10 a month.

Many who get black-market US television watched with astonishment as
exiles in Miami danced in the streets when they heard that Castro had
had surgery and handed over power.

Cuba is seen by many in Miami as an authoritarian prison where dissent
and economic freedom are brutally quashed. Castro's supporters, on the
other hand, see him as a champion of social justice and national pride
for standing up to Washington for more than 40 years.

Still unseen

Officials say Castro, who will be 80 on Sunday, is recovering and should
be back in charge within weeks. But neither he nor his brother has been
seen in public.

Cuba supported Ortega against
US-backed rebels
Nicaragua's Ortega, whose Sandinista government was backed by Cuba in a
civil war against US-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s, declined to say
whether he had visited Castro or spoken to him by telephone.

Ortega used the news conference to voice support for Havana's campaign
to seek the release of five Cubans jailed in the US for spying on
militant anti-Castro groups in Miami, ostensibly to prevent acts of
violence against Cuba.

"This struggle is led by Fidel. He is accompanying us here," Ortega said.

Sources close to the Sandinista party in Managua said Ortega had not
been able to see Castro since arriving in Havana on Saturday. The reason
was not clear.

While Cubans living on the coast have been told to scan the skies for a
US invasion that Washington has assured Cubans it will not stage, the
Cuban authorities continued to organise neighbourhood rallies in support
of the Castro brothers.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C04872C7-69B2-49D2-8505-2864B6FD8506.htm