Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez recalls Black Spring detentions

Posted on Monday, 03.18.13

Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez recalls Black Spring detentions
BY JUAN CARLOS CHAVEZ
jcchavez@ElNuevoHerald.com

NEW YORK -- Renowned Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez ended her three-day
participation in a technology and information seminar in New York
remembering the impact of the Black Spring, a wave of massive detentions
that took place in Cuba a decade ago.

"I want to honor and remember those independent journalists, activists
and peaceful opponents. They opened a road that we now continue to
tread," Sánchez said on Sunday. "They presented an opposition to which
we feel we are heirs despite all the censorship and repression."

The remarks came on the third and final day of a forum organized by New
York University and The New School about technology and the Internet.
Sanchez now heads to Washington, D.C., where she will meet with members
of Congress on Tuesday. She will visit Miami on April 1, where she will
take part in a gathering sponsored by Miami Dade College with students
and community leaders.

On Sunday, Sánchez, 37, said that during the Black Spring, the political
climate in Cuba was not only highly sensitive but also complex. The
dissident movement had little means to share information with the world.

"Those were times when social networks or Internet did not exist [in
Cuba], there were no memory flashes, and it was impossible to have a
computer," Sánchez said.

The 2003 summary trials and prison sentences of jailed opponents marked
a new chapter in the human rights demands by the international community
and the internal dissidence. The incident encouraged mothers and wives
of political prisoners to organize a common front known as the Ladies in
White. The group demanded the release of the prisoners.

Sánchez said that the campaigns and demands of the civil society have
now an additional tool in technology, cellphones and services such as
Twitter, among others.

"Many independent journalists and peaceful activists who began their
work precariously have now resorted to blogs, for example, as a format
to circulate information about programs and initiatives to collect
signatures," Sánchez said. She mentioned the so-called Citizens' Demand
and the petitions submitted to the international community for the
release of Calixto Martínez, a contributor to the nongovernment news
agency Hablemos [Let's Talk] Press, based in Havana.

The Citizens' Demand calls for Castro to ratify the United Nations
political and civil rights agreements signed in 2008. The dissidents
formally handed the demand to the National Assembly of Popular Power
(ANPP in its Spanish acronym). The document demands a legal and
political framework for a full debate of ideas and solutions to the
internal crisis.

"It has been my fate to live in Cuba and that is why I have a commitment
to the reality in which I live," Sánchez said. "Yet it is not a defense
circumscribed to one geographic location, because it is a condition of
citizen responsibility. It is important to have initiatives for
transforming the law and demand concrete public spaces within the country."

In recent months, pressure from the peaceful dissidence to denounce
abuse and lack of guarantees has remained firm despite the
zero-tolerance policy of Cuban authorities.

In the closing day of the seminar, Sánchez and other panelists, like
writer and blogger Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, made reference to the Cuban
government's strategy to impose and maintain a culture of fear over the
civil society.

"The Cuban State Security has specialized in creating intrigues and
false confrontations," Sánchez said. "And the worse part is that when we
leave Cuba we often carry that fear with us in our suitcase. I have
found Cubans here who speak to me in a whisper."

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