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Reporters Without Borders.
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CUBA
Population : 11,237,000
Internet users : 120,000
Privately-owned
ISPs : no
Internet use is very restricted and under tight surveillance. Access is only
possible with government permission and equipment is rationed.
The government says development of computers and Internet resources is a
national priority. Computers and communications minister Roberto Ignacio González
Planas said in October 2002 that the number of computers in the country had
tripled in two years and that fibre-optic cable now linked Havana and Camagüey
and would soon reach Santiago, at the other end of the island.
But material restrictions are still the main obstacle to major public
expansion of the Internet. There are only four phone lines for every hundred
people and the high cost of international calls ($2 a minute to the United
States) and the rarity of lines to the outside world, which are assigned on a
political basis and closely monitored, effectively prevent any connection
through a foreign ISP.
Luis Fernández, spokesman for the Cuban government's Cuban Interests
Section in Washington, blames the long-standing US embargo of Cuba for the
dearth of equipment. "If we didn't have to cope with that, everyone would
have computers by now," he says.
This dodges the fact that the necessary equipment, including the most
modern, is available in special government-run shops but only for authorised
people. It also ignores the internal trade ministry's January 2002 ban on the
sale to individuals in these state-run shops of computers, printers, copying
machines and "all other means of large-scale printing." If such a
purchase is deemed vital, permission must be sought from the ministry. The
general sale of modems was banned. So the Internet in Cuba is a very limited
affair, even though Cuban computer firms are perfectly familiar with all aspects
of the technology.
Priority for institutions
The government passed laws as soon as the Internet appeared in Cuba. In June
1996, Decree 209 (entitled "Access to the World Computer Network from Cuba")
said it could not be used "in violation of the moral principles of Cuban
society and its laws" and that Internet messages must not "endanger
national security."
Cuban who want to log on to it or use public access points must have
official permission, and give a "valid reason" for wanting to and sign
a contract listing restrictions. Decree 209 says access is granted "with
priority given to bodies and institutions that can contribute to the life and
development of the country." Apart from embassies and foreign companies,
this means political figures, top officials, intellectuals, academics,
researchers and journalists working for the government, managers of cultural
bodies geared to exports, computer firms and the Catholic hierarchy. Cuban
export firms have access to national e-mail and the local Intranet.
A ministry of computers and communications was set up on 13 January 2000 to "regulate,
manage, supervise and monitor" Cuban policy on communications technology,
computers, telecommunications, computer networks, broadcasting, radio
frequencies, postal services and the electronics industry.
Beatriz Alonso, head of Citmatel, one of the country's two ISPs, said in the
official daily Granma International on 18 June 2001 that "Internet use by
our institutions means having access to information we need in today's world. We
don't have the sites about pornography, terrorism and other evils that are
common in capitalist countries, especially the United States. Internet use in
Cuba is based on ethics and humanism. We encourage exchange of information for
our professionals and technicians, publicise Cuba's development achievements and
give our schoolchildren and students sources of knowledge."
The country's two servers are Citmatel and CenaInternet, a branch of the
ministry of science, technology and the environment, and Infocom, which belongs
to the Italian-Cuban telecommunications firm Etecsa.
E-mail under close scrutiny
A black-market in e-mail addresses has developed for the few Cubans who have
a computer. A Monitoring and Supervision Agency was set up on 1 January 2001 in
the ministry of computers and communications to track down people who "improperly"
used the Internet. Its head, Carlos Martínez Albuerne, said in an article
in the daily paper Granma on 23 April 2003 that in 2002, sanctions had been
taken against 31 people for this reason or for "using e-mail addresses that
did not belong to them." He did not say what the punishment was.
Where e-mail is concerned, obeying the rules means agreeing to be monitored.
Since September 2001, Cubans have been able to access from the Etecsa centres a
special national e-mail service without connecting to the Internet. An ID card
to use this service costs $5 for four hours (the average Cuban monthly wage is
about $10). The applicant must prove identity, fill in a long form and give an
address. The ISP can thus monitor beforehand all messages being sent or received
and decide whether to deliver them. Some users have noticed delays in their
e-mail, which sometimes even "disappears," especially when sent or
received from abroad.
Vicenç Sanclemente, former Havana correspondent for the Spanish TV
station TVE, tells how in 1999, he was worried he had not received any e-mail at
his office because he was expecting an important message from the Dominican
Republic. He contacted the communications ministry technician who had set up his
e-mail connection, fearing there had been a technical problem. The official told
him he had not turned on the computer at his home for the past few days and
informed him that waiting for him on it were "three messages from the
Dominican Republic, two from Barcelona, one from Montse and another from
Margaret."
Access to cybercafés is restricted for Cubans. Visiting foreigners
who show their passports can now access the Internet in Havana's two cybercafés,
while nearly all the city's big hotels have an Internet centre. Etecsa is also
increasing the number of phone and Internet access points in Havana and
provincial towns for use by foreigners and authorised Cubans. Web-surfing is
unrestricted at these access points, although ISPs can, and do from time to
time, block access to some sites.
Modem links are adequate but the cost of connection is prohibitive - at
least $8 an hour, compared with the Mexico and the Dominican Republic, where
high-speed links cost only $2. So very few people go online.
Members of the National Writers' and Artists' Union (UNEAC) have their own
cybercafé, El Aleph, at the Book Institute in Havana, where they can do
e-mail and access a national Intranet which carries officially-approved
websites.
The government is setting up through youth organisations about 300 Internet
clubs around the country and increasing the number of computer training courses.
When these centres are connected up, Internet access will be restricted to the
officially-approved sites.
A window of freedom…
Despite the very tight control, the Internet is opening a window of freedom
in Cuba and the audience of the country's independent journalists has expanded.
The creation abroad (mainly in Miami) of websites or web pages carrying news
they send out by phone or fax means wide distribution for material they still
cannot publish in Cuba. Their articles are now stored and accessible to the
whole world when before they were only to be fleetingly heard on Radio Martí
(US government-funded and operating from the US), which is not picked up easily
in Cuba.
News such as the arrest of a regime opponent, a social trend among the
population or initiatives by civil society groups - things that used to be
ignored abroad - are thus now immediately reported to the outside world and
increasingly reproduced by the international media, a sign of the independent
journalists' growing credibility and professionalism.
However, the spread of even a small amount of new technology and Internet
access has led to a limited but well-organised black market. Some registered
users rent out their log-on names and passwords for about $60 a month (equal to
about six months salary), while others bring customers to their private point of
access and charge for time online. Staff at the Etecsa centres, who have a
password to connect up tourists and registered users, give friends and relatives
demonstrations of the Internet and sometimes charge for it.
Some Internet users have reportedly managed to smuggle into the country
receiver dishes and modems to connect to big US-based satellite ISPs such as
Starband and DirecPC, with the cost paid by relatives in the US ($500 for
signing up and $100 a month subscription).
…closely watched
José Orlando González Bridón, secretary-general of the
illegal Cuban Democratic Workers' Confederation (CTDC), was arrested on 15
December 2000 and became the first opposition activist to be sent to prison for
publishing something on the Internet. In an article that had appeared on 5
August that year on the Florida-based cubafreepress.org site, he had blamed
police for the death of the CTDC's national coordinator, Joanna González
Herrera. He was accused of "subversion" for also having sent the
article to a Miami radio station.
He was freed on parole on 22 November 2001 three weeks before the end of his
sentence, officially for "good behaviour." He said he thought he was
really released then because the government wanted to make a public relations
gesture on the eve of the 23-24 November Ibero-American Summit in Peru of 23
heads of state from Latin America, Spain and Portugal. He was also let out a
week before a meeting in Havana to restart political talks with the European
Union (EU), which since 1996 has conditioned its aid to Cuba on increased
respect for human rights and political freedom. At the time, Cuba was keen to
join the Cotonou Agreement between the EU and the Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP)
group of countries.
González Bridón said he was held in prison at Combinado del
Este (Havana province) in a punishment cell where the toughest prisoners were
normally sent for maximum three-week periods. He was kept apart from other
prisoners for 10 months and his only piece of furniture was a bed brought to his
cell at 6 in the evening and taken away again at 6 in the morning. His wife
Maria Esther Valdés was only allowed to visit him every three weeks. The
prison authorities refused to give him a special diet he needed to control his
high blood pressure, but he managed to avoid serious health problems.
He said he had witnessed brutal treatment of prisoners and had denounced
corruption at the prison, where prisoners paid guards to get better conditions
or obtain drugs.
His trial took place on 24 May 2001 after several postponements. Foreign
media and regime opponents were kept away by heavy security and only his family
was allowed to attend. The rest of the public gallery was filled with police. He
was sentenced on 2 June to two years in prison for "putting out false news
harming the reputation and image of the Cuban state" with "clear
intent to collaborate with a foreign power."
At an appeal hearing on 21 August, the charges against him were altered to "denigrating
institutions, organisations and heroes and martyrs" and the sentence was
reduced to a year's imprisonment. Friends said the Internet article was used as
an excuse by the authorities to punish him for his overall anti-government
activity.
Links :
Sites carrying articles by independent journalists
inside Cuba :
cubanet.org
nuevaprensa.org (in
Spanish)
cubaencuentro.com
(in Spanish)
cartadecuba.org (in
Spanish)
*Government "Internet and Institutions" portal
*Governement media portal
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned
journalists and press freedom throughout the world, as well as the right to
inform the public and to be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Without Borders has nine
national sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok,
Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, Nairobi, New York, Tokyo and
Washington and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.
* Note Ed: Government sites mentioned at the end of
the report (Links) don't publish the work of the independent journalists.
(CubaNet) | 
