Cuban Bloggers Hold Workshop Despite Official Warnings
source: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=322430&CategoryId=14510
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Cuban Bloggers Hold Workshop Despite Official Warnings
Telling the world about their experiences with repression and censorship.
HAVANA -- Cuban bloggers began a workshop to exchange information despite warnings by the island's authorities not to do so, according to a press release issued Saturday in Havana.
In the communique that was also published on the Generacion Y blog by the Cuban Yoani Sanchez, the cybernauts said that "faithful to their choice of dialogue and the search for viable alternatives, they have found other ways to start their journey without having to travel physically from one place to another."
They said that exchanges have taken place on Friday and Saturday among "people who post blogs on the Internet from the island and others who are interested in visiting this medium."
The document recalled that the workshop "lost its inaugural session because agents of the Interior Ministry summoned certain participants to tell them officially that they were barred from attending the inauguration," scheduled for the city of Pinar del Rio on the western part of the island.
"We can't show documented proof of this prohibition because the agents refused to put it in writing," the workshop participants said, adding that "freedom finds ways that repression can't."
The Cuban bloggers said that the exchanges of experiences "took place in an informal atmosphere, respecting differences of opinion and with a debate of proposals." A Cuban blog contest was suggested for next year.
For her part, Sanchez said Saturday on her blog that "the shouting at police station, the constant operation against us since last Thursday and the prohibition to travel to Pinar del Rio didn't do them much good."
"We eventually found cracks between the censors' fingers that the fine sand of information and knowledge has managed to slip through," she said.
Sanchez, a graduate in Hispanic philology, was honored in April with the Ortega and Gasset Prize, but was unable to travel to Spain to receive the award because Cuban authorities would not allow her to leave the country.
She was recently honored by The Bobs 2008, awarded by German television channel Deutsche Welle, taking the prize for the best international Weblog, an award also granted her by Reporters Without Borders.
Telling the world about their experiences with repression and censorship.
HAVANA -- Cuban bloggers began a workshop to exchange information despite warnings by the island's authorities not to do so, according to a press release issued Saturday in Havana.
In the communique that was also published on the Generacion Y blog by the Cuban Yoani Sanchez, the cybernauts said that "faithful to their choice of dialogue and the search for viable alternatives, they have found other ways to start their journey without having to travel physically from one place to another."
They said that exchanges have taken place on Friday and Saturday among "people who post blogs on the Internet from the island and others who are interested in visiting this medium."
The document recalled that the workshop "lost its inaugural session because agents of the Interior Ministry summoned certain participants to tell them officially that they were barred from attending the inauguration," scheduled for the city of Pinar del Rio on the western part of the island.
"We can't show documented proof of this prohibition because the agents refused to put it in writing," the workshop participants said, adding that "freedom finds ways that repression can't."
The Cuban bloggers said that the exchanges of experiences "took place in an informal atmosphere, respecting differences of opinion and with a debate of proposals." A Cuban blog contest was suggested for next year.
For her part, Sanchez said Saturday on her blog that "the shouting at police station, the constant operation against us since last Thursday and the prohibition to travel to Pinar del Rio didn't do them much good."
"We eventually found cracks between the censors' fingers that the fine sand of information and knowledge has managed to slip through," she said.
Sanchez, a graduate in Hispanic philology, was honored in April with the Ortega and Gasset Prize, but was unable to travel to Spain to receive the award because Cuban authorities would not allow her to leave the country.
She was recently honored by The Bobs 2008, awarded by German television channel Deutsche Welle, taking the prize for the best international Weblog, an award also granted her by Reporters Without Borders.
