Cuba’s Net hunger striker
p2p news / p2pnet: Guillermo Fariñas, editor of Cuba’s Cubanacán Press independent news agency, has told president Fidel Castro he’ll starve himself to death unless he and fellow journalists are allowed the Net access they need for their work.
Fariñas has had neither food nor water since noon on January 31.
He told Reporters Without Borders, “I want all Cuban citizens to have the right to an Internet connection, but also for the independent press to be able to report on the government’s activities, and if I must be a martyr for Internet access, so be it.”
In an open letter to Castro, he points out that the overwhelming majority of Cubans have no Internet access.
Cubanacán Press reporters had been able to send dispatches from a public Net access centre in Santa Clara, says RWB. But that stopped on January 31.
Cubanacán Press concentrates on covering human rights violations in Cuba and on reflecting viewpoints that are excluded from the official media.
February 5th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Wow, he could be the first martyr for the internet itself.
He looks a little skinny already.
Good luck to him.
February 5th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
He looks like bat boy.
February 5th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Absolutely ridiculous.
The crime that is committed here is the continuing attention being paid to the CIA-backed “Reporters Without Borders,” whose funding by the U.S. government is a matter of public record. (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7951)
Since when is access to the internet considered a “human right”? In a developing nation where there are insufficient resources to develop basic infrastructure and services (due in no small part to the 45-year-old U.S. economic embargo of Cuba), these “journalists” expect the government should drop national development priorities so that traitors can send email? Please.
The “independent journalist” in Cuba is nothing more than a proxy of the U.S. government, acting in collusion with diplomatic staff from the U.S. Interests’ Section in Havana. The path is one taken before, since the beginning of America’s obsession with controlling the destiny of Cubans and all Latin Americans. Invasions, puppet governments, support for murderous regimes – these are the legacies of U.S. government intervention in Latin America.
The one country in the region that has put an effort into true human development (health care, education, culture, political participation) is constantly under attack by the last superpower. That Cuba is able to survive at all is amazing.
A “journalist” who conducts a hunger strike for access to the internet deserves mental health treatment, and nothing more.
http://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca
February 5th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
The last I hear about Cuba was that it was struggling to regain the ownership of its Buena vista Social Club music, essentially stolen by American music publishers that operate like the imperialists who have stolen most of antiquitie’s art from Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, Greece, etc.
These imperialists music publishers or collectors just go there, bribe some local official or person to sign a phony document for a few dollars and then claim ownership of whatever they claim.
The Cuban music fight is taking place in Great Britain, of all places. This is because Cuban courts are not recognized by Americans (they may be real justice courts). Then a British court may also act as American courts usually act, declaring any phony documents as valid (because they transfer something to the Americans).
The likes of Cubanacán Press are concerned only for issues that the CIA and the Miami Cubans want discussed to make Fidel llok bad. The CIA operatives have already killed or paid for the killing of Allende and Che Guevarra, giants of our time, because they take orders from the worms that the Americal political process usually places at the top.
More…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,11983,1481052,00.html
February 5th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
that was educational.
February 6th, 2006 at 9:09 am
“that was educational.”
In a Baghdad Bob press release sort of way