CUBA
Police crack down on bloggers
Two Cuban bloggers have been warned about their Internet comments, and
one of them was forbidden to meet with other bloggers.
HAVANA -- (AP) -- Police have prohibited Cuba's most prominent blogger
from attending an independent cyber-workshop and warned that her
activities ran afoul of the law, her husband said Friday.
Yoani Sánchez and husband and fellow blogger Reynaldo Escobar were
summoned separately Wednesday to a police station near their apartment
in Havana's Vedado district and reprimanded, Escobar said in a telephone
interview.
Authorities told the couple they could not travel to the western
province of Pinar del Río for a two-day bloggers' workshop scheduled to
begin Friday night.
''We aren't attending the inauguration of the workshop, which has not
been suspended,'' said Escobar, without elaborating. ``We've just
changed the dynamic of how we are meeting.''
An account of the reprimand appears on Sánchez's blog, Generacion Y. The
site was blocked to Internet users on the island Friday.
Sánchez wrote that police told her, ``We want to warn you that you have
transgressed all the limits of tolerance with your closeness and contact
with elements of the counterrevolution.''
Sánchez's posts about the struggles of daily life on the island have
made her a sensation overseas and she won Spain's Ortega y Gasset Prize
for digital journalism.
She could not be reached Friday, and Cuba's government had no comment.
Another Havana blogger, Claudia Cadelo, was also called into a meeting
with police but failed to appear because she is in the hospital, Escobar
said.
The gathering was supposed to involve about 20 bloggers and was being
organized by Dagoberto Valdés, a Roman Catholic layman in Pinar del Río.
Valdés ran the church magazine Vitral, which gently called for more
plurality and democratic participation, until he was removed from the
post by a bishop in April 2007.
A Valdés associate, Virgilio Toledo, said authorities in Pinar del Río
also advised two local activists not to attend.
The Communications Ministry put into effect a law this week that
instructs the island's Internet providers to ``prevent access to sites
where the content is contrary to social interests, morals or good custom
[and] . . . affect the integrity or security of the State.''
Cuba tolerates no organized political opposition and dismisses
dissidents as ''mercenaries'' who take money from the United States to
undermine the communist system. Internet access is controlled and the
government routinely blocks sites it considers too critical.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/801602.html
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