Freedom House ranks Cuba’s Internet as ‘not free’

Posted on Thursday, 10.03.13

Freedom House ranks Cuba's Internet as 'not free'
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM

Cuba's Internet remains one of the least free in the world, suffering
under "prodigious government regulation" that have left it with little
access to almost anything except for e-mail, the rights group Freedom
House reported Thursday.

The number of Web sites blocked by censors has remained about the same
since last year and the government still uses a "cyber militia" to
attack dissidents, the Washington-based non-profit noted in its global
Freedom on the Net report for 2013.

Branding Cuba as "not free," the report's 14-page chapter gave it an 86,
with zero being the best and 100 the worst. Also on the "not free" list:
China, Vietnam, Syria, Belarus, Sudan, Ethiopia, Burma and Pakistan.

Cuba "has long ranked as one of the world's most repressive environments
for information and communication technologies," it said. "High prices,
exceptionally slow connectivity, and prodigious government regulation
have resulted in a pronounced lack of access to applications and
services other than e-mail."

Only select government entities have benefitted from the ALBA-1 fiber
optic cable that was turned on earlier this year, the report said,
although the ultra high-speed cable had been expected to allow much
wider, cheaper and faster access to the Web.

At least a dozen dissident bloggers were detained and one independent
journalist, Calixto Martinez, whose reports appear on several online
sites, was held without formal charges for six months. Even generally
pro-government blogs were blocked when they crossed the official line of
acceptable criticism, the report said.

Freedom House also reported that government censors blocked Cubans'
access to phone numbers abroad for systems such as the U.S.-based Digalo
sin Miedo — Say it Without Fear — once widely used by activists to
publicize abuses.

The system allowed Cubans to call a U.S. number and record a brief
complaint. A computer would then email an alert to those who had signed
up for the service, such as exiles who support the dissidents or
journalists who report on Cuba.

Government censors also tightened controls on access to the Web in the
workplace — the vast majority of Cubans with Internet connectivity get
it through their jobs in state agencies and enterprises — and continued
to use computer-savvy supporters as foot soldiers in a "cyber war"
against government critics, according to the report.

The "cyber militia," for instance, uses blogs or Tweets to accuse
dissidents of cheating on their spouses or pocketing money meant for
others, and send emails to journalists abroad pushing the Cuban
government line but pretending to be simple citizens.

"Surveillance remains extensive, extending to government-installed
software designed to monitor and control office e-mail accounts as well
as many of the island's public internet access points," the report added.

Most mobile phones in Cuba do not have access to the Internet, according
to Freedom House, founded in 1941 to advocate for democracy, freedom and
human rights around the world.

The report also noted that Cuba's communist-era constitution "explicitly
subordinates freedom of speech to the objectives of a socialist society,
and freedom of cultural expression is guaranteed only if such expression
is not contrary to the Revolution."

In one of the few positive developments mentioned, the report noted that
the Cuban government loosened travel restrictions in January and allowed
some critical bloggers, such as Yoani Sánchez, to leave the island for
the first time in years.

The Cuba chapter of the report, which covers developments up to April,
was written by Ernesto Hernandez Busto, a Cuba-born author who lives in
Spain and edits the blog Penultimos Dias — Penultimate Days.

Source: "Freedom House ranks Cuba's Internet as 'not free' - Cuba -
MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/03/3667709/freedom-house-ranks-cubas-internet.html#storylink=misearch