It will be a week since several activists and independent journalists on the Island have suffered connection problems. Telecommunications outages began, in most cases, on the eve of December 10, International Human Rights Day, and continue this Friday.
The Lady in White Berta Soler and her husband, former Black Spring prisoner Ángel Moya, are among the activists who have had their internet access cut off. The opposition Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello and several independent journalists are also included in the list of those affected by the suspension of services from the Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa).
In the editorial office of 14 intervene, Reinaldo Escobar and Yoani Sánchez’s cell phones stopped working on the night of Saturday, December 9. Added to the total blackout of web browsing service are long intervals in which they cannot even make calls or receive text-only messages through their cell phones. All calls to the Etecsa Customer Service number to report the problem have resulted in the same response: “we are having difficulties.”
In the Editorial building itself, residents have not suffered the cancellation of web browsing, which points to a selective suspension
However, this newspaper was able to verify that, in the same neighborhood of Nuevo Vedado where its headquarters is located, beyond the routine fluctuations in the mobile phone service, customers do not report such serious problems. In the Editorial building itself, residents have not suffered the cancellation of web browsing, which points to a selective suspension.
The independent journalist Boris González is another of those who suffers from the same problem. The reporter reported on his Facebook account that he lost his internet connection since last Saturday and, after a Tuesday day in which it seemed that he had recovered web browsing, he has been left without the service again.
The practice of suspending internet access has traditionally been used by the Cuban regime on certain “problematic” dates, such as December 10, May 20 (anniversary of the founding of the Republic) or whenever activists have called to public demonstrations and protests.
Exactly this type of blackouts It was one of the tactics carried out by the regime, with the help of the state monopoly Etecsa, to prevent the repression of July 11, 2021 from being transmitted in real time, as it managed to happen with the first demonstration of that day, in San Antonio de los Baños.
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