Spanish blogger Rosa Jiménez Cano, who works at the Spanish news daily El País, reported that she received the following SMS text meessage from Yoaní around 2am Madrid time:

Fui detenida junto a Orlando L. Pardo y Claudia Cadelo nos llevaron a la fuerza estilo siciliano. Golpes. Nos dejaron tirados en una esquina.

The morning after the events, Yoaní posted the following account on her blog:

Cerca de la calle 23 y justo en la rotonda de la Avenida de los Presidente, fue que vimos llegar en un auto negro –de fabricación china– a tres fornidos desconocidos: ‘Yoani, móntate en el auto' me dijo uno mientras me aguantaba fuertemente por la muñeca. Los otros dos rodeaban a Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo y una amiga que nos acompañaba a una marcha contra la violencia. Ironías de la vida, fue una tarde cargada de golpes, gritos y malas palabras la que debió transcurrir como una jornada de paz y concordia.  Los mismos ‘agresores' llamaron a una patrulla que se llevó a mis otras dos acompañantes, Orlando y yo estábamos condenados al auto de matrícula amarilla, al pavoroso terreno de la ilegalidad y la impunidad del Armagedón.

Me negué a subir al brillante Geely y exigimos nos mostraran una identificación o una orden judicial para llevarnos. Claro que no enseñaron ningún papel que probara la legitimidad de nuestro arresto. Los curiosos se agolpaban alrededor y yo gritaba ‘Auxilio, estos hombres nos quieren secuestrar', pero ellos pararon a los que querían intervenir con un grito que revelaba todo el trasfondo ideológico de la operación: ‘No se metan, estos son unos contrarrevolucionarios'. Ante nuestra resistencia verbal, tomaron el teléfono y dijeron a alguien que debió ser su jefe: ‘¿Qué hacemos? No quieren subir al auto'. Imagino que del otro lado la respuesta fue tajante, porque después vino una andanada de golpes, empujones, me cargaron con la cabeza hacia abajo e intentaron colarme en el carro. Me aguanté de la puerta… golpes en los nudillos… alcancé a quitarle un papel que uno de ellos llevaba en el bolsillo y me lo metí en la boca. Otra andanada de golpes para que les devolviera el documento.

Yoaní's post goes on to describe further brutality inflicted on herself and Orlando, and their eventual release:

Nos dejaron tirados y adoloridos en una calle de la Timba, una mujer se acercó ‘¿Qué les ha pasado?'… ‘Un secuestro', atiné a decir. Lloramos abrazados en medio de la acera, pensaba en Teo, por Dios cómo voy a explicarle todos estos morados. Cómo voy a decirle que vive en un país donde ocurre esto, cómo voy a mirarlo y contarle que a su madre, por escribir un blog y poner sus opiniones en kilobytes, la han violentado en plena calle. Cómo describirle la cara despótica de quienes nos montaron a la fuerza en aquel auto, el disfrute que se les notaba al pegarnos, al levantar mi saya y arrastrarme semidesnuda hasta el auto.

At the time of writing, Yoaní's post had attracted 1,412 comments.

Claudia also quickly entered her version of the incident on her blog:

We refused to get in the car, there were three of them and they threatened us:

‘Get in the car, now.'
‘Let us see your documents, or bring a policeman.'

Orlando had his cell phone in his hand. ‘Pardo, don’t record,' said the one in the orange shirt, and I got my cell out. Nobody noticed me, I sent the first Tweet… In less than three minutes a patrol car came up with a couple of cops—a woman and a man—completely dumbstruck by the scene. They carried out their orders almost in slow motion, the woman told me:

‘Don’t resist.'

‘They are undocumented,' it occurred to me to enlighten her.

Yoani was clinging to a bush, I was clinging to her waist, and the woman was pulling me by the leg. They had already dragged Orlando off, outside my field of vision. A man at the bus-stop looked on with an expression of terror, people didn’t say a single word. The officer, very young, got me in an armlock that immobilized me. I could have kicked a little but I was too astonished at seeing Yoani’s legs sticking out the rear window of the State Security car.

Her post goes on to relate the chain of events in great detail, but she ends on a triumphant note:

Then the first call came, with a 00 international prefix, and I knew nothing had been in vain, even if we had all been arrested and the march suspended. When, later, I saw the video that Ciro brought me, I knew for certain: They lost; it's the countdown.

Commenting on the incident, diaspora blogger Uncommon Sense expresses some surprise, since “those of us overseas who presume that because Yoani, Claudia and the others are so well known, the Castro dictatorship would never dare arrest them.” Yet arrest them they reportedly did. He continues:

Of course, we should never be surprised at what the regime does when it comes to trying to silence its opposition on the island.

And we should never underestimate the importance of the protection we provide every time we read one of their blogs. Obviously, it doesn't provide them absolute immunity, but it is conceivable that someone like Yoani Sanchez would have a long ago been locked away in the Castro gulag were it not for the fact that she is so well known.

What you provide them with each click is the moral support vital for their continuing struggle for freedom.

Meanwhile, Babalu Blog, after publishing the story as breaking news, kept updating the post as more details became available, including an 8:15 am entry showing evidence of physical abuse via a photo that was sent to Penultimos Dias by Orlando Luis Pardo.  Cuban American Pundits‘ John R. learned of Yoani's detention from Babalu and goes on to comment:

It can only be said that the Cuba Governement is afraid, and that these heirs to Cuba's future are extremely brave.

The blog also searched mainstream media sites to determine how big the story was and was disappointed to learn that “the only thing CNN is covering on Cuba is how Miller Beer and Haagen Dazs ice cream may be sold in Cuba — for a premium nonetheless. As Cuban citizens are sequestered and beaten for their exercising of free speech, Chicago Foods (and other companies) are negotiating how beer and ice cream are to be sold on the island.” (CNN eventually went on to cover the story of the bloggers' seizure.)  The post goes on to comment on the U.S. economic embargo against the island, saying:

For those who claim that a new era has dawned on Cuba should take a close look at the incident that happened with a peaceful group of Cuban bloggers. Nothing has changed. Oppression remains in the cities while luxury and freedom exudes in the resorts.

I don't know about you, but I'm no longer eating Hagen Dazs ice cream nor drinking Miller beer.

Oswaldo Payá of the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación issued a statement expressing solidarity with Sánchez and other victims of repression. My big, fat Cuban family is also standing in solidarity with her Cuban sisters:

I have the supreme luxury of writing about anything that excites or amuses me at any given time. And I do.

Today I want to make you aware if you're not already, of a group of dissident bloggers presently under fire for blogging in Cuba.

Unlike me, they write about the everyday indignities of living in castro's gulag. You understand, of course, that in a communist country, dissension is not just discouraged, it is oftentimes attacked.

Yet these brave bloggers persist…Tonight, Yoani Sanchez and a group of dissidents were picked up, harassed, detained and beaten as they prepared to attend, ironically, a demonstration against the use of violence.

They knew and called her by name and forced her into a car where she figured that this was a kidnapping  which would end in her execution. Although she and her dissident companions were beaten severely they were subsequently released.

Her safety lies here. On blogs like mine.

Along the Malecon gives some background to the incident and firmly believes that “the legend of Yoani Sanchez grew Friday after Cuban authorities snatched her off the street, shoved her into a car and roughed her up before freeing her”:

Luis Eligio, of the counterculture group OMNI-Zona Franca, and two rappers organized the march. On Oct. 20, Sanchez was one of more than 10 bloggers who staged a ‘virtual protest' using Tweets, cell phone text messages and blog posts to call for the release of political prisoners. All this puts the socialist government in a tough spot. The more force authorities use, the easier it will be for opposition activists to recruit followers. These incidents also help galvanize international support for Sanchez and other bloggers. This support grows at an exponential rate, colonizing cyberspace and making it difficult for the Cuban government to effectively counter.

In a separate post, the blogger highlights the views of those who are a tad sceptical about the whole event, one of whom is Cuban journalist Vladia Rubio Jiménez, who writes in her blog:

Francamente, me resulta bien oscuro el asunto. ¿A partir de ahora seremos testigos de “espontáneas” marchas de protesta? ¿Contra qué violencia estaban pronunciándose esos muchachos con sus abstractos carteles? ¿Sería contra la que está ocurriendo en Afganistán, Honduras,  o contra lo acontecido en la más importante base militar norteamericana donde un enloquecido disparó y dejó muertas a 13 personas y varios heridos?

She continues:

Por lo que leo, parece haber sido una manifestación organizada sobre todo a través de algunos blogs, entre ellos Octavo Cerco; y también me asombra ver las posibilidades tecnológicas de que disponen: teléfonos celulares, rápidas conexiones a Internet que incluso les permiten subir los videos… En ninguna parte dice con claridad quién convocó esa marcha.

Yohandry's Weblog echoes her sceptisicm:

Pero bien, Claudia Cadelo dejó este vídeo en su blog. No comprendo cómo pueden subir sus videos a Youtube tan rápido, pero allí está. Ella misma por Twitter dijo que no había llegado hasta el performance, además de que explicó que estaba detenida.

Cómo pudo hacer Twitter detenida, cómo subió el video desde un carro de la policía?

Entra en acción Yoani Sánchez. Ahora bien, Yoani Sánchez cuenta a las siempre listas agencias y emisoras que tienen la misión de cubrir sus actividades lo ocurrido con ella y otros bloggers que se encaminaban al performance, quizás con el objetivo de provocar, nadie sabe.

Les dejo la grabación, ¡esos medios tan ágiles al servicio de Yoani! Adelanto que cuenta que ella tiene celular, computadora y seguirá haciendo Twitter, cosa que no acabo de comprender, cuando ella misma dice que no tiene libertad para trabajar en Cuba.

Y yo esperaré ahora la otra versión de lo ocurrido. Como dice el dicho, siempre hay un ojo que te ve.

Social media users are certainly keeping a close eye on developments.  Even as Claudia tweeted about the incident, apparently while it was happening - “Estoy detenida about 22 hours ago from txt” was her first entry - her Twitter followers have shown their support, with one user calling her “muy valiente” (”very brave”).

Anton Volnukhin (aka Ya.blogs user Antonme), a spokesman for Yandex.ru, wrote on the company blog [RUS]:

We noticed that service, which had been initially created as a mirror, a reflection of the blogosphere, became an amplifier, a media tool. The effect of a positive feedback took place: many bloggers started to write, comment and include links with a purpose to “bring a post to the top.”

Just about everyone started to use this tool - from the disseminators of the links “please help collect money” to radicals of any kind. As a result, radicals of one kind started to accuse Yandex of helping radicals of another kind and vice versa. Journalists got into the habit of looking through the blog ranking, bringing posts to the top became a paid service and now the authorities perceive the ranking as vox populi.

Transformation of the blog ranking  into a specialized media platform doesn't allow us to develop this service as a part of Yandex portal. We don't see any perspective to make it a mass service - and the development of Yandex is mainly focused on mass services. This is why we decided to stop supporting the service and, at the same time, simultaneously provide everyone with the technical ability to create their own ranking of popular blogs, their own version of the answer to the question “what do popular bloggers care about?” Similar rankings already exist on different sites of RuNet. We hope that the usage of data from Yandex Blog Search will create many similar services and will help everyone find a suitable ranking.

Artemiy Lebedev (aka LJ-user tema [RUS]), one of the most influential and controversial personalities of RuNet, is the first who started using Yandex Blog Top RSS on his Web site [RUS]. Lebedev claimed that the ranking was shut down due to the reasons not mentioned in the official statement from Yandex:

Well, to be short, Yandex got completely fed up with complains about the blog ranking which has always been the most crystal clear and honest rating in the world.

This is why rating will continue to exist on the Web site of Artemy Lebedev's Studio…

Because it is written in the studio charter that politicians and priests can f…k themselves, the director of the company will not hesitate to tell any politician or pries to f…k themselves.

First, let f…k themselves […] anyone who is not OK with the fact that the ranking is created by a robot on the basis of objective parameters.

The other version of Yandex Blog Top RSS also appeared on the site Whoyougle [RUS].

Yandex.ru has bigger audience than many cable TV-channels in Russian (20 million visitors in September 2009 [RUS]). Bloggers used the popularity of the site to bring many controversial topics to the attention of the Russian audience by including links and adding comments to the posts. Some believe this led to political pressure resulting in the elimination of the blog ranking.

Habrahabr user SSE [RUS] claims [RUS] that political pressure on Yandex wasn't a secret:

It became known as early as in October that someone “at the top” wasn't very happy with the free ranking of alternative points of view.

Andrey Malgin (aka LJ-user avmalgin[RUS]) explained [RUS]:

A pleasing picture that we saw in  TV newscasts was very different from the things that bloggers, especially politicized ones, were writing about. Now this has been ended…

Roman Ivanov (aka LJ-user kukutz [RUS]), Yandex “chief Lulz officer” (Yandex virtual spokesman), argues [RUS] that the Yandex blog ranking did not attract a large audeince and had only 7 thousand visitors a day. At the same time, the amount Yandex Blog Search monthly visitors  in September 2009 was around 2,5 mln visitors in September 2009 [RUS] or 12,5 percent of the total monthly visitors of Yandex.ru. Many RuNet users strongly disagree with this statistics and claim that the blog ranking was much more popular than Yandex officially announced.

Additional info

Yandex.ru dominates Russian search engine market. According to Vedomosti newspaper [RUS], it is accouned for 54,5 percent of the Russian search traffic. In July 2009, ComScore research [ENG] stated that Yandex is among top 10 world's search engines with 1,5 percent of the world search traffic.

Today is also notable for another event — the continuing trial of detained video blogging youth activists Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli in Baku, Azerbaijan. The last court hearing was adjourned because witnesses did not turn up. Media Helping Media comments on the latest developments in what many consider to be a politically motivated case to silence dissent in the country.

The trial of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev (also known as Milli) was adjourned ten days ago after a brief appearance by the two on hooliganism and violence charges.

[…]

Those campaigning for the release of the two men suspect that there may be political reasons behind the delays.

Media freedom groups have been protesting about the arrests and detention and claim it is part of an effort to limit freedom of expression.

Two days ago, Emotions on Air, Mind Mute, a newly launched English-language Azeri blog, reflected on the the case against the two young activists.

I started to intensely think about Emin and Adnan. I came to be proud of their parents,teachers and elders. I became curious about books they have read. I got jealous of friends they have, as they were lucky to know these great men personally.

Now it hurts very much that they are in prison. Their great time of lives has been stolen. Their summer has been taken away. Their parents spend sleepless nights. They have been deprived to enjoy their work, make mistakes, hang out with youth and talk to them. Their email inboxes are flooded with messages and run out of extra space.

But they keep on inspiring youth. They are hoping and planting seeds of liberty. They are spiritually free despite that their physical freedom is limited.

[…]

I think of my future now. How will it be? Will it come at all given the society I live in. Will I be arrested one day? My kids I will have.. if ever. […]

All I know is I want them to be hooligans like Emin and Adnan.

Nevertheless, many of Hajizade and Milli's supporters remained resigned to more delays.

As it was, the hearing was held although witnesses displayed selective memories. As usual, friends and supporters of Hajizade and Milli used new and social media such as Facebook and Twitter to update others.

The fact that key witnesses and the alleged victims themselves were unable to provide testimony prompted one supporter to hope that the trial might now end.

However, although it was proven that the two activists had reported an incident of physical assault against themselves, missing key evidence soon gave many reason to fear the worst. [Update: Eurasianet has since reported that the phone records were ruled inadmissible by the judge]

Amidst criticism that the authorities are stringing out the trial indefinitely, their fears were probably well founded. Despite calling a break, the hearing was not resumed.

Yet, while the action against Hajizade and Milli looks set to continue in a trial considered by the international community and local civil society organizations to be highly flawed, perhaps the last laugh went to Hajizade and Milli's supporters who noticed the irony when the two activists were taken away.

Also somewhat ironically, the date set for the next hearing will coincide with a roundtable discussion on the case at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Hooliganism or Freedom of Speech? The case of two bloggers detained in Azerbaijan

On July 8, 2009, two bloggers and political activists, Andnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, were arrested in Azerbaijan on charges of “hooliganism”. The bloggers were detained shortly after posting a video on YouTube mocking the Azeri government's purchase of donkeys from Germany. After nine trials, the two bloggers (both without prior criminal records) remain imprisoned. The four presenters will form a panel discussion to speak about this particular case of the bloggers and what it means for freedom of speech in Azerbaijan as well as the greater Caucasus region.

Present for the event will be Parvana Persiani, Hajizade's girlfriend and a senior figure in the OL! Azerbaijani youth movement, who will also be attending next week's World Blogging Forum in Bucharest, Romania.

Global Voices Online hopes to interview her there and Persiani will also feature in a live Internet interview on Kosmoshow.

Full coverage of the detention and trial of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli is available in the Azerbaijan section of Global Voices Online and on the OL! Blog (in English and Azeri). The hashtag #EminAdnan is also used on Twitter.