Less Freedom of Expression in Cuba

Publicado el 05-08-2009
Less Freedom of Expression in Cuba

In one more effort to silence the dissidents and the opposition, the
Cuban government, through ETECSA, Cuba's telecommunications monopoly,
has established new regulations preventing that its citizens might
access the Internet in the country's hotels.

Nowadays, only government employees, academics and researchers are
allowed to have Internet accounts, which are provided by the government.
But, in recent years many ordinary Cubans had been using hotel Internet
services, which have it for foreign tourists. This resulted in many
bloggers who are critical of the government.

Since they no longer will have access to Internet at the hotels, a
service that is expensive but that the bloggers in one way or another
were able to pay, they will only have the possibility of using Internet
services at the U.S. Interests Section or at a foreign embassy that
would allow them to use it. This would entail the risk of an accusation
by the government of being mercenaries at the service of "Yankee
imperialism" or of any foreign government.

The Cuban government has never ceased to be what it is, an absolute
tyranny that does not tolerate freedom of expression since this is
fundamental to stay in power. Those who thought that in some way that
government had yielded somehow because the bloggers were able to
communicate outside the country now will realize how wrong they were.
The totalitarian dictatorship of the Castro brothers cannot continue to
allow the bloggers to communicate with the outside world and they have
taken the necessary measures to prevent it.

However, there are still people in the United States and Europe who
continue to insist that it is necessary to lift the American trade
embargo, blaming it for all the depravation and vicisitudes that the
Cuban people suffer. With or without the embargo, what Cuba has is a
cruel totalitarian Marxist-Leninist dictatorship that does not allow
freedom of expression, right of assembly, and freedom of movement. This
has not changed in fifty years, although occasionally there have
appeared small loopholes that the regime has immediately closed, as it
has done now with access to the Internet.

Some time will have to pass to see what will be the international
reaction at this new attack against freedom of expression in the
long-suffering isle of Cuba that Marti envisioned as free.

Diario Las Americas - Less Freedom of Expression in Cuba (9 May 2009)

http://www.diariolasamericas.com/news.php?nid=77655