Cubas Internet blockade an abuse of basic right

Posted on Mon, Jun. 12, 2006

Cuba's Internet blockade an abuse of basic right

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service

The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Friday, June 9:

X X X

The Cuban regime's Internet blockade drew some fire at the recent
Organization of American States' meeting in Santo Domingo. The final
declaration pointedly noted that ``without political censorship,'' the
Internet helps develop democracies. Such truth, however, will offer
little comfort to Guillermo Farinas, a Cuban dissident who appears ready
to die protesting the Internet ban.

Farinas, 42, began his hunger strike on Jan. 31 after regime authorities
shut down his e-mail access. Today, 129 days later, he's sustained by
intravenous drips in a hospital in Villa Clara in central Cuba. Doctors
operated to remove fluids from his lungs last week. Last week his sister
said that Farinas was ``shutting down, bit by bit.''

Why would Internet access be so important that a man would stake his
life on it? Farinas, a psychologist turned independent journalist, used
e-mail to send uncensored dispatches on the regime's attacks on
dissidents and other human-rights abuses. Once posted on the Internet,
the reports could be read by people all over the world. He wanted his
e-mail access restored to continue spotlighting the plight of more than
300 political prisoners in Cuba's jails.

Of course, reporting on such politically incorrect topics is illegal in
Cuba for the same reason that the regime has blocked access to the
Internet for years. Cuba's dictatorship wants to control all information
coming in and going out of the island. That's how it protects its
47-year-old media monopoly - its tool for manipulating public opinion,
both in Cuba and abroad, and staying in power. Unfettered access to the
Internet poses a grave threat to the regime. Uncensored news and access
to e-mail might give Cubans democratic ideas.

We do not condone Farinas' hunger strike, and we hope for his recovery.
Yet, despite the pleas of his family and fellow dissidents, Farinas
insists on continuing his protest. Last month he sent a letter asking
the new U.N. Human Rights Council to condemn Cuba's government for its
abuses. He also insists on his right to Internet access. The regime's
Internet blockade is yet another sign of its indifference to such
fundamental freedoms.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/14799139.htm