Friday, February 10, 2012

CPJ: Rousseff Quiet As Cuban Blogger Denied Travel to Brazil

Rousseff Quiet As Cuban Blogger Denied Travel to Brazil
By Carlos Lauría/Americas Senior Program Coordinator, 9 February 2012

press release

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 provide
explanations. A government with a ski mask and a gun in a holster,"
tweeted Sánchez on Friday after the Cuban government denied her request
to travel to Brazil. It was, according to the blogger, the 19th time
Cuban officials have turned down her request to leave the island. As in
the past, officials gave no reason for the rejection.

Brazilian filmmaker Dado Galvao announced Tuesday that he was postponing
the premiere of the documentary "Connection Cuba-Honduras," a movie
about press freedom in both countries, in solidarity with the Cuban
blogger, who participated in the film. Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff, who visited Cuba last week and declined to meet with Sánchez
or any dissidents, spoke to reporters before Cuba denied the blogger
permission to leave the country. "Brazil gave the visa to the blogger.
The rest is not a matter for the Brazilian government," Rousseff said at
the time.

Sánchez's work is well known outside Cuba. She has received several
international awards, including Columbia's University's Maria Moors
Cabot Award for excellence in Latin American reporting, and she blogs
regularly for the U.S.-based Huffington Post. Sánchez also gained a
measure of fame when President Barack Obama responded to a written
questionnaire she sent to the White House in November 2009.

Sánchez has not only been denied permission to travel abroad but has
suffered official harassment for her work. In early November 2009,
Sánchez and two other independent Cuban bloggers were detained,
harassed, and assaulted by state security agents on their way to a
peaceful march in Havana. Sánchez has also been the victim of smear
campaigns in Cuba's state media, which have described her as a
"cybermercenary" at the service of foreign governments.

A vibrant and enthusiastic independent blogging community has emerged in
Cuba in the past few years, according to CPJ research. The bloggers, who
face severe legal, economic, and technological limitations, are mostly
young and from a variety of professions. They critically examine the
issues that Cubans face daily: food shortages, health care, education,
housing problems, and the lack of Internet access, a 2009 CPJ special
report found.

Free press advocates and Cuban journalists point to Sánchez as a pioneer
in this evolving community. Sánchez, who started blogging in April 2007,
was the first to write under her own byline. Her blog, Generación Y, and
several other Cuban blogs are hosted by the German-based portal Desde
Cuba (From Cuba), a place where, as its introduction says, "citizen
journalists" can offer "opinions that don't have room in official Cuban
outlets or any other publication that is conditioned by political
requirements."

Rousseff's first visit to Cuba as president had raised expectations
among some independent reporters, bloggers, and political dissidents
that she would speak about human rights on the island. But the Brazilian
leader stayed away from the topic, sticking instead to the trip's key
mission of developing trade and boosting Cuba's economy. Sánchez wrote a
blog entry prior to her visit, in which she expressed hope that
Rousseff's behavior would be "consistent with the clamor for democracy,
instead of opting for a complicit silence before a dictatorship." But
Rousseff's visit to Brazil clearly showed that Latin American leaders
are still reluctant to address Cuba's grave human rights violations when
they travel there.

CPJ Senior Americas Program Coordinator Carlos Lauría, a native of
Buenos Aires, is a widely published journalist who has written
extensively for Noticias, the world's largest Spanish-language
newsmagazine. Follow him on Facebook @ CPJ en Español.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201202100606.html

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