The Cuban dictatorship maintains the internet blockade but allowed the publication on social networks of an act with Raúl Castro

A team from the Efe news agency today covered in person an act in Havana in support of the Revolution in which Raúl Castro participated. On the spot, he verified that the internet service on cell phones, inaccessible since the Sunday demonstrations, is not yet available … Even if the images of the concentration published by senior officials and official institutions are multiplying on the networks social.

Power cuts and Internet blocks are a tool the regime typically uses to quell protests: the goal is that no video or call is shared and, moreover, that the world does not know what is going on there. Hermeticism allowed him to survive decades of Castro’s brutal dictatorship. But today, the dictatorship has allowed access to networks to announce its own convocation.

The assistants to the pro-regime act were summoned at dawn to the area known as La Piragua, on the Malecón which runs through the Vedado district and very close to the headquarters of the United States Embassy. . Along with Cuban flags and the July 26 Movement, photographs of the late Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, the demonstrators – many grouped according to their membership in different state organizations and businesses – cheered the leaders and chanted slogans in favor. of the Revolution.

Along with Díaz-Canel, former President Raúl Castro, 90, was forced to temporarily leave his retirement due to the gravity of the situation.

This concentration takes place with Cuba mired in the worst moment of the coronavirus pandemic. Havana recorded 763 new infections on Friday, one of its highest figures since the start of the health crisis. Last Sunday’s protests, the strongest in Cuba in the past six decades, came with the country mired in a serious economic and health crisis, with the pandemic running out of control and a severe shortage of food, medicine and more. commodities, in addition to long power cuts.

During the main protest on Havana’s iconic Paseo del Prado, protesters marched peacefully until police and counter-protesters confronted them, causing injuries and arrests.

Internet blocking

Cuba has limited access to fixed and mobile internet and used other methods to filter online content 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 internet access. “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 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is visiting Washington.

An idea raised by the experts would be 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.

KEEP READING: