Anti-regime Cuban blogger back at it after arrest

Anti-regime Cuban blogger back at it after arrest
AFP November 12, 2012, 4:23 am

HAVANA (AFP) - Despite two arrests in a month, a defiant Cuban blogger
is right back at it, criticizing the Havana government as part of a
drive that has made her famous abroad even if she is little known at home.

Yoani Sanchez took to social media Friday and had little to say about
the eight hours she spent in detention.

But she did say she was delighted with her role as regional vice chair
for Cuba of the Inter American Press Association's Press Freedom Committee.

The Miami-based media watchdog named her to the post Thursday while the
37-year-old activist was held in a Havana police station with other
opposition figures, trying to find out about dissidents picked up a day
earlier.

Those 16 people were freed Thursday night and early Friday.

When Sanchez was freed, she tweeted to her 355,423 followers, "Once
again I can walk along the streets of Havana after being detained for
several hours. I am fine. Thanks for your support!"

Bloggers close to Cuba's communist regime regularly attack Sanchez on
social media. Oddly, her recent arrests were announced by her main
detractor, a blogger who goes by the name of Yohandry Fontana.

Yohandry (www.yohandry.com), who tweets all day, just as Sanchez does,
defended her arrest.

"She was arrested for provoking Cuba on orders from the United States...
just a few hours after" President Barack Obama won re-election on Tuesday.

Sanchez, whose blog Generacion Y is translated into 15 languages, had
been arrested October 5 in the southeastern city of Bayamo and was freed
30 hours later in Havana.

She had tried to cover the trial of Spanish political activist Angel
Carromero, the driver in a road accident that left leading Cuban
opposition figure Oswaldo Paya dead in July.

The arrest of Sanchez was covered profusely by Yohandry. In Cuba, such
events are rarely made public.

Sanchez tweeted Friday that one of the main challenges of her new role
at the IAPA will be to prepare a detailed report on freedom of the press
in Cuba.

Although she is an international celebrity, Sanchez is almost unknown in
Cuba, especially outside Havana.

In Cuba, the Americas' only one-party Communist regime, it is illegal to
speak out against the government, news outlets are controlled by the
state, access to the Internet is tightly controlled and there is no
broadband.

"Her face is not familiar for most Cubans, but her name is," said
dissident Elizardo Sanchez, who runs the National Human Rights and
Reconciliation Commission, which is illegal but tolerated by the government.

Her work at the press association "is going to be very difficult,
although all of us in the emerging civil society are going to support
her," he said.

Sanchez noted that many Cubans had learned of the blogger's existence
after an allusion to her in Fidel Castro's book "Fidel, Bolivia and
Something Else," published in 2008.

"Many people know her from the Cuban government's attacks on her, and
even those of commander Fidel Castro himself," Elizardo Sanchez said.

In his book, the father of the Cuban revolution does not mention Sanchez
by name. But he criticizes the comments she made after the Cuban
government denied her permission to go to Spain to receive an award
bestowed by the country's top-selling newspaper, El Pais, in 2008.

Time magazine named Sanchez as one of the world's 100 most influential
women in 2008.
Sanchez gained notoriety that year because there were many foreign
journalists in Cuba to cover Raul Castro's election to succeed his
brother Fidel, who had withdrawn from the scene in 2006 because of
health problems.

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