Internet critic is identified in Cuba
In Cuba, the Internet is used to reveal the identity of the man who
called it a threat to the revolution.
By JUAN TAMAYO
jtamayo@elnuevoherald.com
The lecturer in a Cuban government video on the dangers of the Internet
has been identified — on the Internet — as a 38-year-old
counter-intelligence official who follows blogger Yoani Sánchez on
Twitter. Eduardo Fontes Suárez's Facebook page is now down.
But photos of him as a teenager and details on his education and the
Havana neighborhood where he lives have been appearing in blogs about Cuba.
The video, which began getting attention Thursday on the Internet,
showed an unidentified lecturer speaking to an audience of Interior
Ministry officers about the dangers that the Web presents to the Cuban
government.
"The Internet is a field of battle," the lecturer declares as he argues
that the U.S. government has tried at least since 2008 to use the Web to
subvert the Cuban revolution.
Popular bloggers like Sánchez - she regularly criticizes the Cuban
government — and even groups of young Cuban-Americans that reach out to
their counterparts on the island are part of a covert U.S. campaign
against the island, he adds.
By Friday night, the lecturer had been identified by readers of
Penultimos Dias, a Spain-based blog about Cuba issues. Other blogs,
including the Miami-based Café Fuerte, fleshed out his identity in the
following days.
Fontes Suárez is a 38-year-old computer engineer who joined the Interior
Ministry's counter-intelligence section after he graduated in 1990 or
1991 from Havana's Vladimir Ilich Lenin high school, which is reserved
for the children of Cuba's ruling elites, according to comments posted
by visitors to the blogs.
He is the son of a lieutenant colonel in the Interior Ministry's State
Security Directorate — in charge of domestic security — and now lives in
the Havana municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, according to the posts.
He's married to Beatriz Basabe, a biochemist who works for the Nutrition
and Food Hygiene Institute in Havana, where she carries out nutritional
studies, according to another comment.
By Monday, Penultimos Dias had published three photos of Fontes Suárez
as a teenager, but attempts to view his Facebook page were answered with
the message, "This content is currently unavailable."
"I don't know how they are going to fight in the 'cyberwar against Cuba'
if they withdraw from Facebook. With those opponents, we've already
won," wrote one visitor to Penultimos Dias.
Other comments on the blog identified him as the holder of the Twitter
account "Tatofontes" — Tato is a common nickname for Eduardo. The last
Twitter he posted came near midnight on Dec. 15 - "Buanas (si, mal
escrito) Noches La Habana — Good Night Havana.
The Tatofontes account shows he is "followed" by 92 other persons on
Twitter and that he in turn "follows" 112 others. Among those he follows
are Yoany Sánchez, pro-government singer Silvio Rodriguez andthe El
Nuevo Herald newspaper.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/07/2055415/internet-critic-is-identified.html
No comments:
Post a Comment