Sánchez, Cuba’s blogging pioneer, eyes a new trail to blaze
Having broken through one long-standing barrier, Yoani Sánchez, the pioneering figure in Cuba’s independent blogosphere, is looking to smash another. “It seemed like an impossible dream, but here I am,” Sánchez told a gathering today at CPJ’s New York offices. After being denied travel authorization at least 20 times in the past, Sánchez is in…
Eating a cable: Internet access still elusive in Cuba
There is a popular expression in Cuba that is synonymous with difficulty and crisis. When you want to indicate that someone is doing badly economically, it is sufficient to say that he is “eating a cable.” Street humor has identified the act of chewing and swallowing a bundle of wires with scarcity and material want.…
Audio: From Cuban prison, reporter speaks out
Cuba, historically one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, has returned to CPJ’s prison census after a one-year absence. Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, a reporter for the independent news agency Centro de Información Hablemos Press, was imprisoned in September after he started looking into why an international shipment of medicine was allowed to go…
Most censored nations each distort the Net in own way
One big reason for the Internet’s success is its role as a universal standard, interoperable across the world. The data packets that leave your computer in Botswana are the same as those which arrive in Barbados. The same is increasingly true of modern mobile networks. Standards are converging: You can use your phone, access an…
Assisting journalists forced to flee censorship
CPJ’s Journalist Assistance Program supports journalists who cannot be helped by advocacy alone. In 2011, we assisted 171 journalists worldwide. Almost a fourth came from countries that made CPJ’s Most Censored list. Eight journalists from Eritrea, five from Syria, six from Cuba, and a whopping 20 from Iran sought our help after being forced to…
Expelled from Cuba jails, journalists languish in Spain
In 2010, following midsummer negotiations between the Catholic Church and the government of President Raúl Castro, Cuban authorities began releasing imprisoned journalists, sending them into forced exile with their families. In April 2011, the last of more than 20 journalists arrived in Spain. They had been granted liberty and respite, and were promised support from…
Cubans exiled in Spain: Integration or disintegration?
Desperate realities call for hope. It is not just a game of words, because you don’t play with hunger and the future (my own and my family’s). It is about going deeper into another version of circumstances. And seeing the rainbow where others see a gloomy sun and a stubborn and relentless rain.I am writing…
Remembering Cuba’s Du Bouchet Hernández
On Wednesday morning, exiled Cuban journalist Albert Santiago Du Bouchet Hernández took his own life, according to reports in the Cuban exiled media. He was the last of more than 20 Cuban journalists to be released from prison and sent to Spain following July 2010 talks between the government of Cuban President Raúl Castro and…
Rousseff quiet as Cuban blogger denied travel to Brazil
The response from Cuban officials did not take anyone by surprise. Prominent Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez had been, once again, denied permission to leave her country after she was granted a visa by the Brazilian Embassy in January to attend a film festival. “I feel like a hostage kidnapped by someone who doesn’t listen nor…