Cuba: Yoani Sanchez at the White House

Yoani Sanchez. File photo: Kelly Knaub/HT

HAVANA TIMES — Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez was received today by senior White House officials as part of a visit to Washington. Her trip also allowed her to meet with legislators, members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and academics, reported dpa news.

“After many years of being prohibited from traveling outside of Cuba, Yoani Sanchez, a respected advocate of the freedom of information (…) is visiting the United States. Today we salute her at the White House,” said the spokesperson of the National Security Council, in a statement.

The author of the blog Generation Y was received by President Barack Obama’s adviser on Latin American issues, Ricardo Zuniga, who discussed “efforts to promote a growing respect for freedom of expression in Cuba.”

“The United States looks forward to the day when all Cubans will have the opportunity to express themselves in public without fear, and we continue to support policies that encourage the free flow of information to, from and inside Cuba,” said Hayden.

The blogger herself Tweeted about her visit to the White House and the State Department — which has also awarded her — and the Senate, after speaking with Cuban-American congressional representatives.

“I’ve finished in the Senate and am now going to the State Department and the White House. What a day,” said the blogger on the social network.

Sanchez began an international junket in February that took her to several countries in Latin America and Europe. In the United States, the blogger and dissident visited New York in recent days, and after her stay in Washington she will travel to Miami, where most anti-Castro Cuban exiles are concentrated.

9 thoughts on “Cuba: Yoani Sanchez at the White House

  • If I had the funding and the mass-media support she has, probably I’d had much more success in ‘sharing my views’ of the world than her. She’s an intellectual farce – the only time she was not interviewed by somebody whose purpose was not to lift the volleyball for her to cut she did pretty bad, making a fool of herself. You adore idols with clay feet and thus do not admit critics to another US Secretary of State mouthpiece just like yourself.

  • She has made her position very clear. What is left to wonder? She wants democracy and human rights for Cuba. She is openly critical of the Castros and looks forward to a peaceful change in regime.

  • Are you so critical of Yoani simply because she has a different view of the world than you or that she is so much better at sharing her views with the world than you are? There are millions of Yoanis in Cuba? Do you despise them too or just her because she has been so well received around the world and, in comparison, to other Cubans, well paid? Silvio Rodriguez is a millionaire trovador who travels the world singing revolutionary songs. To me he is not so talented but I don’t ‘hate’ him the way you seem to hate Yoani.

  • Yoani is courageously showing the way to a better future. Now it is up to the Cuban people to join the modern world by discarding centuries of civic lethargy. Cubans do not need dictators of the left or the right.

  • To the best of my knowledge, Yoani is on the side of democracy and human rights.

  • I often wonder what “side” she is really on

  • A meeting with the boss. How ‘unusual’.

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