[IFRT:2057] Cuba Says Internet Ban Deters "Satanic Cults"

[RKent20551@cs.com]

                PRESS RELEASE
               January 27, 2004

Friends of Cuban Libraries
For Immediate Release
Contact: Tel. 718-305-9201

         CUBA SAYS INTERNET BAN DETERS "SATANIC CULTS"

The Cuban government has responded angrily to worldwide protests of its 
tightened ban on home-based access to the Internet, scheduled to go into 
effect in 
late January. Only a small percentage of Cuban citizens are allowed to surf 
the World Wide Web, and even before the new ban was enacted home-based access 
to 
the Internet through the public telephone service was generally illegal, but 
until now many Cubans have been able to surf the Net clandestinely by 
purchasing passwords on the black market. The new law will make it easier for 
the 
government to track down and prosecute unauthorized Internet use over the 
public 
telephone lines.

>From its London-based headquarters, Amnesty International issued a report 
saying that the new law to "impede unofficial Internet use constitute[s] yet 
another attempt to cut off Cubans' access to alternative views and a space 
for 
discussing them." In a letter to a New Zealand newspaper (Scoop, January 24), 
the 
Cuban ambassador, Miguel Ramirez, described Amnesty International's protest 
as "totally biased and full of prejudices according to the values of western 
and developed countries...," and he defended Cuba's new law as a reasonable 
measure to "regulate access to [the] Internet and avoid hackers, stealing 
passwords, [and] access to pornographic, satanic cults, terrorist or other 
negative 
sites..." 

In response to a Jan. 16 protest of the new Internet ban by the intellectual 
freedom committee of the International Federation of Library Associations, 
known by the acronym FAIFE, Cuba's official library association accused FAIFE 
of 
using a double standard in criticizing violations of intellectual freedom. 
Declaring that the IFLA committee "spins acrobatic pirouettes in order not to 
scrape, not even with a flower petal, the 'democratic' societies..." such as 
Spain, where the government "closes newspapers and tortures journalists," and 
the 
United States, where the government "hunts down readers' records, blackmails 
librarians, and violates the privacy of all of its citizens' communications." 
In contrast, the island's government-controlled library association accused 
FAIFE of "showing unusual vigor and astonishing agility when trying to issue 
anathemas against revolutionary Cuba." 
(http://www.bnjm.cu/librinsula/2004/enero/03/dossier/dossier.htm)

On the domestic front, Cuba's official press responded to international 
criticism of the Internet crackdown with a flurry of defensive articles 
("Cuba 
Promotes a Truly Democratic Internet, Specialists and Social Leaders Affirm," 
La 
Jiribilla, Jan. 30). The Cuban Minister of Information and Communications, 
Ignacio Gonzalez Planas, asserted in a press interview (Juventud Rebelde, 
Jan. 18) 
that "everywhere, every day, measures are taken [in other countries] to 
prevent disorder, which is essential if the Web is to function well. When we 
ourselves take certain basic measures to control illegality, criticism 
immediately 
flares up from people claiming to be worried about the 'freedom' of the 
Cubans, 
even though [the critics] could confirm for themselves, although it pains 
them to do so, that the Cuban people are the freest people on Earth."

The new law cracking down on home-based Internet use is only one segment of 
an intensified government campaign to reduce contacts between Cuba and the 
outside world. In recent weeks the police, in coordination with Cuba's 
nationwide 
system of block committees, have renewed their efforts to locate and tear 
down 
unauthorized satellite antennas used by some Cuban homeowners to view foreign 
television stations; the owners of the antennas are heavily fined. Videotapes 
stocked by clandestine rental stores, denounced as "transmitters of violence, 
vice and pornography," are being seized in raids intended to suppress 
"ideological diversionism" and limit television viewing to Cuba's official 
broadcasters. Registered computers can be legally purchased only at 
government-owned 
stores, and the baggage of arriving foreign visitors is often x-rayed to 
prevent 
the importation of high-tech equipment. The regime is also conducting a 
campaign called "Operation Windows" to register all computers on the island, 
whether 
publicly or privately owned. Many Cubans, fearing that Operation Windows will 
be followed by a general confiscation of home-owned computers, are hiding 
their high-tech equipment from the police and the nationwide system of 
neighborhood surveillance groups, known as Committees for the Defense of the 
Revolution.

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