IAPA condemned Internet and social media censorship by Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) condemned this Thursday the “new push” to freedom of expression in Cuba which means the approval of a decree that increases “control and restrictions on the use of the Internet and social networks” on the island.

This is Decree-Law 35/2021, a series of measures that the Cuban regime launched on Wednesday in response to anti-government protests peaceful which began on July 11.

The new regulations on “Telecommunications, information and communication technologies and the use of the radio spectrum” establishes 17 “cybersecurity” offenses.

Yes indeed, the call to demonstrate is considered a crime of “cyberterrorism” and the posting on the web of material considered to be subversive is classified as a highly dangerous incident.

Honduran Jorge Canahuati, president of IAPA, struck out the decree as “another push against freedom of expression”. a regulation drawn up with “an ambiguous language which imposes greater limits in the social networks”.

Canahuati pointed out that “These (social networks) have become the main means that citizens use to disseminate and consume information.

“The approval of this new provision it is the desperate reaction of an authoritarian and cornered regime ”, said, for his part, Argentinian Carlos Jornet, chairman of the IAPA Press and Information Freedom Committee.

He noted that this measure adds to “laws and decrees that already exist in Cuba to sanction journalists, activists, citizens and any position critical of the official”.

“Intimidation against the population and independent journalists” due to the use of the Internet is not new in Cuba, IAPA said in a statement.

The IAPA denounced in its biannual reports the state monopoly of the Cuban Telecommunications Company (ETECSA) as an enforcement arm for restrictive policies in Internet and telephony services.

The Chapultepec Index 2020, an IAPA measurement tool based on its Salta Declaration on Freedom of Expression in the Digital Ecosystem, places Cuba, along with Nicaragua and Venezuela, among the countries whose governments censor the digital space by blockades, hacks and the threat of criminal sanctions.

The IAPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression.n in the Americas.

(With information from EFE)

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