The newly "reformed" Cuban government didn't approved the exit permit to Yoani Sánchez, to fly to Spain and receive her Ortega y Gasset Award.
For some reason that I don't know, the article that I read this morning in El Nuevo Herald online, has disappeared. Not a problem. The news is being reported here, here , here and here.
Anyway, it looks like the award and she being included in Time's 100 most influential people was not enough reason for the "reformist" to allow her to travel. Could it has something to do with saying some "inconvenient truths"?
(Maybe "they" are interpreting Times' nomination as competing against Evo "cabeza de melón" Morales, who is also in the list? just speculating...)
Ernesto Hernández Busto, the host from the blog Penúltimos Días, has been designated to go to receive the award on her behalf. He does not need a carta de libertad to travel from Barcelona to Madrid.
Tonight, May 7th 2008, the ceremony will take place.
And here is the open letter Ernesto wrote her.
Boy, you've got to love this Chinese computer without Internet+cellphone+toaster oven freedom!
Isn't that super-cool?!
2 comments:
hello. I'm a cuban living in cambridge, ontario ( canada).
I would like to talk about yoanis and her blog. that place start like a new and fresh site about cuba. I never share the wide and big enthusiastm about yoanis because I think there many people in cuba facing all kind of bad things because their political views and their castro's system oposition.
The ortega and gasset award means nothing, it is given by The Prisa Group, who is the sponsor of El Pais, a well know left wing newspaper ( spain). I have no pity because yoanis can't go to pick up her prize. I have a pity and sadness because some of my countrymen is suffering jail in the worst conditions, sicks, with no medical atention, I feel shame when I saw the repression on the street against a pacific group of women walking for freedom. I don't care about yoanis and I don't care about her "boom". I do care about more important things in cuba.
by the way, I enjoy your blog. it is somethimg really fresh.
thank.
Brainwaves, thanks for coming to take a look.
As I've said before, I will always give Yoani the benefit of the doubt...only time will tell.
But, IMHO, the point here is not as much as her and her blog, as it is that they are just an example of the censorship and the repression that Cubans have been suffering --and still do.
It's not a matter whether we think the award is relevant or not --in a democracy like the one we both enjoy, we have the freedom to think about it the way we want.
It's a matter of having the rest of the world know that in Cuba, the animals need permision from the owner to leave the farm --among thousands of other aberrations.
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