They Want to Silence “Letters from Cuba”

Fernando Ravsberg

HAVANA TIMES — Dear readers of Letters from Cuba: during the last week we were subjected to constant attacks that managed to shut us out of cyberspace. Our team has worked hard to successfully reestablish the site but the attacks continue; we have received 20 in less than 24 hours.

It seems to be a fairly well organized warfare; the attackers have a battery of different “IPs” and the goal was to create the feeling that entering Letters from Cuba could be dangerous for the surfer.

Eventually they managed to get some web servers to mark us as high risk and we received hundreds of letters advising us. We thank all those who warned us and showed concern about the situation, especially OnCuba and Havana Times. Thanks to these and other sites, the post from last week was published in English and Spanish despite Letters from Cuba being temporarily blocked.

We still don’t know who is behind these attacks but we do know that they seek to silence Letters from Cuba. We clearly have powerful enemies with considerable resources devoted to preventing our voice from being heard, my voice and that of all the journalists, bloggers and intellectuals whose views appear on our site.

They had already tried to silence us when we were part of the BBC and it was necessary to change many procedures to prevent attacks. They renew the attack now when they think we are weaker technologically. However, once again they are mistaken, as we are confident that honest journalism is more powerful than an army of hackers.