This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday March 26 2008 on p15
of the International section. It was last updated at 00:00 on March 26 2008.
Cuba has blocked access to the country's most popular blog, signalling
an apparent government crackdown on a new generation of cyber critics.
The blog, Generación Y, received 1.2m hits last month, but its writer,
Yoani Sanchez, said Cubans could no longer visit her web page.
Attempts from the island to view desdecuba.com/generaciony and two other
Cuban blogs which share the server in Germany prompt an error alert,
though the site can be viewed outside Cuba.
"The anonymous censors of our famished cyberspace have tried to shut me
in a room, turn off the light and not let my friends in," Sanchez wrote
in her most recent post.
Analysts said the crackdown underlined the communist authorities'
determination to keep tight control despite some cautious moves towards
economic reform and greater openness since Fidel Castro stood down, and
his brother, Raúl, replaced him as president.
As the most-read blogger Sanchez, 32, a philosophy graduate, who does
not disguise her identity, was seen as a litmus test of official
tolerance for dissent. "I think this action is directed at a phenomenon
that was getting out of their hands," she told the southern Florida
newspaper the Sun-Sentinel. "I don't think they're coming after me
personally. I think they're moving against a phenomenon of which I am a
part."
Her husband, Reynaldo Escobar, a journalist, said he was surprised the
clampdown had not happened sooner. "It's interesting that at a time when
people are waiting for the government to lift restrictions, they would
apply more restrictions," he said. Critical bloggers occupy a grey area
in Cuba; neither legal nor illegal, they form an underground network
that vents frustration at economic hardships and lack of freedom. Old
Havana has just one internet cafe, a state-owned enterprise charging
£2.50 an hour for computer use, a sum that is a third of the average
Cuban monthly salary.
Raúl Castro has urged greater candidness over corruption and
inefficiency, and eased restrictions on the sale of electronic goods,
including computers.
In her postings Sanchez said these minimal changes were hardly enough to
break the sense of suffocation and stagnation in the country.
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