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Yoani Sánchez, popular Cuban blogger from "Generación Y", was forced into a car and beaten by secret police in Havana along with Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo and Claudia Cadelo, who writes for OctavoCero and Global Voices. Sánchez was recently refused a visa to travel to New York to accept the Maria Moors Cabot prize from Columbia University. Sánchez, Cadelo, and Pardo Lazo were on their way to an anti-violence protest in Havana.
Sánchez blogged about her arrest and beating in her post A gangland style kidnapping/ Secuestro estilo camorro:
We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.
I managed to see, however, the degree of fright of our assailants, the fear of the new, of what they cannot destroy because they don’t understand, the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered.
She and her friends were pulled into an unmarked car, beaten up, and dumped out on a street corner.
Claudia Cadelo blogged about their kidnapping and the beating: I prefer victim to executioner and Violence against nonviolence:
I have felt the guilt and the blame, I have wondered so many things that I don’t have time to answer myself. I have tried to reconstruct the facts two millions times but I think the gaps are getting worse. I don’t remember Tweeting from the patrol car, I don’t know if the first Tweet was when I was fervently clutching Yoani’s waist or when I saw her legs sticking out of the black State Security car. I don’t remember if I called, did not call, who I called. I can’t even recall the face of the Security agent who was next to me.
They were arrested and beaten up, but the march against non-violence went on.
In this video, Yoani speaks out against Internet censorship during a debate about the Internet and Cuba. She stands up around minute 3:00. Many alternative bloggers including blogger
Reinaldo Escobar were blocked from attending the debate.
And here is an article which quotes from Rafael Hernández, one of the organizers of the debate: Blogs y debate excluyente
Censuras y ataques personales hacen retroceder el debate público.
Yoani Sánchez appears to be part of a group of bloggers who struggle to get their posts out of Cuba. They want an open flow of information to and from Cuba. Currently they have to struggle to gain brief access to the net, and email out their writing to friends and fans abroad who re-post them. She and other "alternative bloggers" could post pseudonymously, but they choose to write under their own names despite the risk of jail and possibly their lives. Sánchez's blog Generación Y gets millions of hits per month from all over the world, easily making it the most popular blog from Cuba.
Miriam Celaya from Sin Evasión recently wrote about Yoani Sánchez's class for bloggers.
Classes began just this Monday, October 26th.. There were about 30 people there, where we initially imagined 15. The group, a generational and professional veritable kaleidoscope, revealed known and “new” faces, all of them hopeful and optimistic in their desire to seek and find the unprecedented adventure of achieving the requisite knowledge for free expression. A current of empathy and respect prevailed in this first meeting as a good omen of better times ahead.
For some of us, a few months ago, Yoani opened the path and started to train us in the use of the virtual wings. Now, those who, thanks to that, have our own web spaces, are a group of restless idealists of the most varied training who will be alternating between the teacher podium and the student desk, according to each case, and putting in the maximum of our best energies in boosting the possible utopia of giving and receiving
