Yoani Sanchez Protests Grounding/Threats

Photo from Yoani Sanchez’s blog Generation Y.

HAVANA TIMES (dpa) — Award-winning Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez filed complaint against Cuba before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on Friday over her government’s repeated refusal to grant her an exit visa.

The complaint came after Cuban authorities “refused de facto” the 20 requests to travel out of Cuba that Sanchez has filed since 2007, her lawyers told reporters in Washington after filing the complaint.

She claims Cuba’s inaction on her requests to travel were the same as denials.

On all those occasions, Sanchez – an outspoken critic of Cuba’s communist authorities – planned to travel to other countries after being invited there and being granted the necessary entry visas.

In Cuba, people need to request an exit visa in order to be allowed to leave the country.

Sanchez’s blog Generacion Y has in recent years been awarded numerous prizes abroad that she has been unable to collect in person for lack of the necessary exit permit.

This, according to her lawyer Bjorn Arp, is a violation of the right to be able to leave one’s country as contemplated in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.

Sanchez’s lawyers also filed a request for precautionary measures in her favor, arguing that police and social pressure on her and other dissidents has increased in recent months and they fear for her physical well-being.

The IACHR was likely to take several months to assess the complaint and move to admit or dismiss it. However, the commission’s precautionary measures might be announced within days, Sanchez’s lawyers said.

The Cuban government has accused Sanchez of assisting the US government in its effort to promote regime change in Cuba. Despite highly serious public accusations of aiding the enemy, Sanchez has never been charged of any crime.

 

18 thoughts on “Yoani Sanchez Protests Grounding/Threats

  • You again! Don’t you have a job? Clip articles all day and nignt and never have a single idea. You refuse to acknowledge that Yoani is an agent; no Cuban can get a Pay Pal account without the intervention of the U.S. government, and Yoani has one; if she is not an agent of the U.S., how did she get the PP account? Answer that or shut p!

  • Why not normalize relations. Who cares if Castro still rules as long as he treats people fair. Locking up an innocent person is a pretty crazy move for someone that wants to be modern and popular.

  • I’ve tried searching the Cuban Wikileaks pages for “yoani” and came up with zero results.
    Perhaps I am a “dummkopf”, but please could you put up the link to the correct search page/

  • Lawrence W !! Why dont you help the “dummkopf’s” and put the link! Please be a good Pionero!!

  • Americans never tire of trying to prove there’s no blockade for obvious reasons. Blockades hurt people ostensibly while trying to ‘help’ them, resulting in a gaping contradiction.

    But in covering up the contradiction, it opens up another even more obvious contradiction. If the blockade is ineffective, then why is the US maintaining it?

    It’s so much easier writing with facts and logic on your side. But ‘Humberto’, you wouldn’t know about that.

  • Even dummkopf’s know how to access Wikileaks cables. Haven’t you had any interest in learning what’s really going on in the US government? I bet if they were Cuban government cables you would have been there faster than Jack Flash.

    Go to any of the Wikileaks cable search engines and type in ‘yoani’. There are three pages of results. It will be a good exercise for you. Look around while you are there. You may learn other interesting things.

    You’ seem to be addicted to websites that specialise in propaganda. I hope unvarnished reality won’t be too much of a shock to your system.

  • Blockade!! Lawrence W?? How can you esplain these trade numbers??

    U.S.-CUBA TRADE AND ECONOMIC COUNCIL, INC.
    ECONOMIC EYE ON CUBA- February 2012 – Report For Calendar Year 2011
    2011-2001 U.S. EXPORT STATISTICS FOR CUBA

    CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE REPORT!

    http://www.cubatrade.org/CubaExportStats.pdf

  • Lawrence W !! Links please! Or are you afraid??

  • burrgess !! Links please! Or are you afraid??

  • Jerzy, I’m sure you’re mixing Yoani’s writing up with some of the spear carriers in Cuba state media who regularly attack her.

    There’s a reason why Yoani has won so many international awards. She an excellent writer and has earned these accolades.

  • You have your answer Humburto, you like to parade out u tube etc, now you have Wikileaks.

  • There are 24 cables on Wikileaks from the United States Interest Section in Havana that contain communication between USIS and Yoani between 2007 and 2010 when Wikileaks obtained the cables.

    I leave it up to folks to connect the dots.

  • The issue is whether Yoani should be free to leave Cuba and return, not whether she is free to express her views, which she is.

    Under the current state of siege, a blockade equivalent to an act of war of a country that represents no physical threat to the blockader – a clear act of aggression – it is VERY important who Yoani receives funding from.

    Fox News exists as a media joke, hardly representing “opposition media” but if it was funded by al-Qaeda, an entity the US claims is a threat to its existence, I wonder how many nanoseconds it would take before their executives found themselves on their way to Guantanamo.

    That would be the only overseas travel they would likely be allowed.

    Al-Qaeda, an organisation that uses acts of terrorism in an attempt to change US government practices, offers a legitimate comparison to tactics the US has used against Cuba and to the US goal of bringing down Cuba’s government.

    You can have ‘voracity’ – truthfulness – and still be a propagandist, telling one side of the story honestly. Granma is an example of truthful propaganda whilst ‘Moses’ routinely provides the deceitful variety.

    Under the current state of siege, any propaganda funded by the aggressor is equivalent to funding a ‘Tokyo Rose’. It was claimed ‘her’ stories (there were more than one) were “unnervingly accurate”.

    If the Castros are “paranoid”, we have the 54-year old blockade to blame for it.

    Cubans have always been independent thinkers. Otherwise they would have capitulated to the American Empire long ago.

    Americans always claim they love independent thinking as long as it is not independent of their thinking. That’s when blockades and acts of terrorism begin.

  • jerzy !! Do yo have credible proof that Yoani works for the CIA?? and Lawrence W !! Why doesn’t the Cuban
    “government” allow Yoani on TV and question her about her CIA “connections”?? Would love to see that happen, she would leave those in The Mesa Redonda in THE DUST! We all know that accusing people without proof in a public forum is defamation, calumny! Is good that you both have no real names!

  • Señor Sanchez is no threat to Cuban sovereignty. The US has many detractors calling for the overthrow of the government. Heck, Fox News exists as opposition media. She should be allowed to express her views, regardless of where she receives funding. Voracity is the least of her defects. The Castros are just paranoid that Cubans may begin to think on their own.

  • One would have expected our relentless commenter, ‘Moses’, to camp all over this but it tells us something that he hasn’t. I think it shows he knows Yoani is popular overseas but not in Cuba. ‘Moses” is focused on fomenting unrest within Cuba.

    I would recommend to the Cuban government that they should offer her a highly publicised one-way exit visa to leave Cuba with no option for coming back if she wants to leave. I suspect it would be popular with Cubans.

  • It is easy to criticize and this lady is very good at that.If she was not blogging from Cuba she would be a well paid nobody.

  • Yoani’s articles are painful to read. I checked some of them out of curiosity. She represents neo-anti Castro end of “journalistic” spectrum where’s no more room left for any rationality or sensible balance. She crawls out of her skin to please rage blinded-linch thirsty mob and her CIA payers. There’s no lie fat enough or misinterpretation screwed beyond any recognition to compress into her ‘sweat-out’ coursing that her sponsors call “journalism”… Too bad so much venom goes wasted in the world still craving for medicine…

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