Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2008
By ww/pdo
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
HAVANA --
A top Cuban official said Friday that Raul Castro's government would
consider loosening Internet restrictions on ordinary citizens newly
allowed to purchase computers - but Washington's decades-old economic
embargo makes it impossible.
"We aren't worried about the citizenry connecting from their homes,"
Telecommunications Vice Minister Boris Moreno told a small group of
reporters.
"But problems with technology and resources have made it necessary to
give priority to connections that guarantee the country's social and
economic development," he said, referring to an islandwide network that
lets Cubans receive e-mail and view domestic Web sites.
The rest of the worldwide Web is blocked to most citizens in Cuba, which
has access controls far stricter than in China or Saudi Arabia. Only
foreigners and some government employees and academics are currently
allowed unfiltered home Internet service, and many Cubans turn to the
black market for expensive, slow dial-up accounts.
Computers for home use were also not available until two weeks ago, when
state stores began selling them to the public as part of a series of
small quality-of-life changes since Raul Castro replaced his elder
brother Fidel in February.
But Moreno said the government is unable to offer Cubans comprehensive
Internet for their new PCs, citing its long-standing complaint that the
American embargo prevents it from getting service directly from the
United States nearby through underwater cables. Instead, Cuba gets
Internet service through less reliable satellite connections, usually
from faraway countries including Italy and Canada.
"Free access is not on the table at the moment," Moreno said.
Moreno said that in the next two years authorities hope to link to
fiber-optic service from Venezuela, which has replaced the Soviet Union
as Havana's chief economic benefactor.
He also criticized Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, whose posts about the
struggles of daily life on the island have drawn worldwide notice and
recently won her Spain's Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism.
Moreno said the 32-year-old Sanchez was deeply affected by coming of age
during the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union brought the
Cuban economy to its knees. He said he found it sad that she "speaks ill
of a government that didn't close the university where she studied in a
moment of crisis."
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