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 knowledge that very soon will be at the service of freedom.

This is not an isolated incident. Over 20 journalists and bloggers are jailed in Cuba. Just this fall, Luis Felipe González Rojas and Yosvany Anzardo Hernández, two bloggers from the online newspaper Candonga, were arrested and beaten up in the city of Holgún. Their computer equipment was confiscated.
Related links:
* Yoani Sánchez and other bloggers seized by Janine Mendes-Franco from Global Voices. This is an excellent link round-up with excerpts from many posts translated into English.
* Women's Rights blog at Change.org

* Along the Malecón: Yoani and other bloggers. A timeline of political incidents that have affected bloggers and blogging in Cuba.

* Committee to Protect Bloggers : Yoani Sánchez Briefly Detained

* Candonga is 404 not found at the moment.

* cubaencuentro.com has a post honoring Yoani Sánchez listing many of her acheivements, and including a long list of journalism and blogging awards she has won.

* Milena Recio's Thoughts on the Cuban blogosphere from June 2009. Recio wrote a great Three part report on blogging in Cuba back in 2006. My impression is that things are much the same as she reported in 2006, but that since the spread of cell phones, computers, and other technology was allowed in 2008, more people have slipped the leash and are using social media.

* The Committee to Protect Journalists: CPJ condemns assault, harassment of Cuban bloggers. They also have an excellent report on the current Cuban blogosophere: Special Report: Chronicling Cuba, bloggers offer fresh hope and a report by Laritza Diversent, blogging from Havana: The alternative Cuban blogosphere.

* Cuban Bloggers Arrested from Uncommon Sense.

* Voces Cubanas has been up intermittently, but blocked within Cuba.

* Sandra Álvarez from Negra Cubana is still blogging about race, culture, literature, and cultural events in Cuba. (@NegraCubana.)

* Bloggers Cuba is strangely silent on the subject of the attack on Yoani and other bloggers. Another good, but somewhat stilted, "official" Cuban blog. (@BloggersCuba).

* Hechizamiento habaénico by Lia Villares, a great blog about art, literature, politics, and culture. Poems by Legna Rodríguez, Adrianne Rich, José Lezama Lima are side by side with complicated rhizomatic photos and hip videos and sidebar widgets that demand, "¡facebookéame!". (@liavillares

* Zenia Regalado has been blogging for almost five years, mostly about culture and literature.

* Elsy Fors on NotiCuba hasn't been blogging for a year, but her journalism is interesting and good. Take a look!

* Videos from Yoani posted by one of her fans overseas.

I'd also like to point to a fascinating interview with journalism professor Daniel Salas about blogging and the Cuban blogosphere from El Último Swing. (English from Google Translate ).

Salas says, "I'm not interested in people who want to overthrow the government; I want to work for socialism." I understand a little bit of where this is coming from. Any attempt to read about Cuba gets me a sort of official story, which is mostly bare reporting on literary and cultural events, musicians, and dead poets. And it gets me a lot of very angry right wing Cubans in exile who really, really want to overthrow the Cuban government. It is possible to find people in between, like Salas and like Yoani Sánchez, and I appreciate them very much.

What distinguishes Cuban bloggers around the world?
DS: Que demasiada gente y demasiados poderes están mirándonos. DS: That too many people and too many powers are watching us. Que todo lo que hagamos puede ser usado en nuestra contra. That everything we do can be used against us.

I agree with Daniel that there is a lot of unjust hostility towards Cuba and its government around the world and I see his point about workers caring more about making better wages than about "the digital divide" and access to computers. And yet I still believe that working class people and socialism itself benefits when everyone tells their story in a public forum and can access information. Yes that will result in criticism, and the world mass media can jump all over sensational events. But everyone and every country has to weather that kind of storm. It's a necessary part of criticism and improvement!

I agree more strongly with Yoani that the flow of information can't be stopped,

If you understand Spanish you may also want to listen to Yoani's audio interview thoughts on her detainment and on the violence to her and her fellow bloggers.

And to round things off, here are my past posts on the Cuban blogosphere:
* Looking for Cuban blogs where I spent some time watching Cuban bloggers appear and disappear off the net, even personal bloggers, people talking about art, libraries, their daily lives, children, science, and so on -- people who weren't overtly political in their writing.

* Latino, Caribbean, and South American Weblog Award finalists in which I notice with annoyance that all the Cuban and Venezuelan finalists are political conservatives mostly in exile criticizing their countries giving a one-sided picture of blogging from from those countries.

As a better model for blogging and free speech to address the issues Salas raises, I would instead point to the Elecciones 3D project from Venezuela which was careful to include and aggregate many viewpoints.

But that's for political blogs, and could never fix the problem that a blogger writing frankly about the ordinary details of her daily life might add to a negative worldwide perception of Cuba. I think those perceptions have to be faced head-on no matter what they are. Just as in the United States we have to write frankly about racism, poverty, inequalities in health care and education, and prisoners unjustly imprisoned, torture, and war crimes.

So, I'd like to add my voice as a blogger to the crowds denouncing this and all other violence against writers, journalists and bloggers.

Please blog about Yoani, Claudia, and Orlando's detainment, and you might also follow Yoani and Claudia on Twitter and Facebook, as a show of support. (Yoani: @yoanisanchez and Facebook. Claudia: @claudiacadelo).