USA: “Cuban regime is afraid of what people have to say, that’s why it blocks social media”

“There is only one reason to block access to social networks and messaging apps. Fear, ”Julie Chung wrote on her Twitter account., US Under Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

The official assured that the Cuban regime is afraid of what the people have to say. “He is afraid of the truth”, he accused.

In his message, heThe Joe Biden official praised Cuban dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel and Republic of Cuba Communications Minister Mayra Arevich Marín for ensuring the message reaches its intended recipients: the regime.

General too accompanied his statement with the hashtag #UnblockCuba, a trend on Twitter to demand the lifting of the blockade of mobile data and Internet access throughout the island.

Power cuts and internet blockages are a tool that the regime typically uses to suppress protests: the goal is that no videos or summons are shared and, moreover, that the world does not know about it. happening there. Hermeticism enabled him to survive decades of the brutal Castro dictatorship and Since July 11, when a wave of spontaneous protests surprised the world, the regime has again put the strategy into practice and blocked communications on the island.

Since, the regime restricted access to fixed and mobile internet and used other methods to filter online contenta with Chinese-made technology, said Gaspar Pisanu of digital rights group Access Now. “They take away people’s ability to use mobile data by revoking their SIM cards, censoring hashtags, blocking messages on VPN,” he said.

President Joe Biden said last Thursday that the White House is examining whether the US government can help Cubans regain access to the Internet. “They cut off access to the Internet. We wonder if we have the technological capacity to restore this access, ”he said at a press conference. One idea put forward by experts would be to send balloons with mobile WiFi, a measure taken during natural disasters.

To circumvent the limitations of the Internet, activists resort to a variety of resources, including virtual private networks (VPNs), “mesh networks” that connect groups of computers and techniques to conceal their activities, but none have been used on a large scale.

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

This week, human rights activist Manuel Cuesta Morúa assured from Cuba that social networks have played a fundamental role in historic protests against the Castro regime which started on July 11. The internet shutdown operated by the dictatorship was not enough to appease the citizens of the island who were already fierce in the streets to demand their rights and freedoms.

“The networks have made the difference. The internet has made the difference in that for the first time there are protests from east to west. This is the first time in the history of Cuba, there have never been such major protests, massive, deep and popular, and what we have seen is thanks to the networks ”, expressed Cuesta in a forum organized via the social network Twitter Space organized by the Argentinian organization Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de América Latina (CADAL).

Cuesta, said the internet shutdown on the island occurred between one and two hours after the protests began, and the announcement the reset was unstable.

The activist, who was also detained during the early days of the protests, explained how they found out what was going on in different cities across the country.: “We found out because young people from various parts of the city started arriving at the police station. They have become our reporters. They kept keeping us informed, we learned from them at night that even in Pinar del Rio, there were demonstrations ”.

Journalists and other spokespersons residing on the island of Cuba were to participate in the digital event, but Due to outages and instability of their internet services, they were unable to connect.

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