Global Voices Online

The detention, beating and subsequent release of bloggers Yoaní Sánchez, Claudia Cadelo and Orlando Luis Pardo by Cuban state security on November 6, is receiving widespread coverage in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere and twittersphere. Yoaní has written (es) about the incident on Generación Y, her blog, and English-language blogs like Babalú Blog, Repeating Islands and Uncommon Sense are following the story. An audio interview (es) with Sánchez about the incident has been posted to YouTube.

On the evening of November 6, Babalú blog linked to a post by Penultimos Dias (es) reporting that a number of prominent Cuban bloggers, including Yoaní Sánchez and Global Voices contributor Claudia Cadelo, were detained by state security forces. An update from Penultimos Días reported that Sanchez and Orlando Luis Pardo were “verbally abused and severely beaten”.

Late one night, a Cuban taxi driver stops for Yoani Sanchez because of the colour of her skin, but when he learns that she's a blogger, his unease reveals another kind of prejudice: “His spectrum of classification stigmatizes not only some shades of color, but also certain leanings of opinion…that also lead, on this Island, to displays of segregation and rejection.”

As six Cuban homosexuals are reportedly arrested, Uncommon Sense says: “their real ‘crime' — like that committed by all Cubans, gay or straight, labeled as ‘pre-criminal social dangers' — is that with their lifestyle, [they] have chosen to not conform with the ‘revolutionary ideal.'”

“I think that for Cuba to transition to an open society from a society ‘with some emergency exits', some of the people now occupying positions of power in the government could take a long vacation…”: Octavo Cerco contemplates what's needed for meaningful change in Cuba.

Cuba's Generation Y feels like a nomad in cyberspace, but is confident that “one day my blog will be found on a server on this Island and, believe me, it will not be because it has performed an ideological pirouette.”

“Press conditions were considered worse only in Burma, Iran, Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea”: Uncommon Sense refers to the latest Reporters Without Borders index of press freedom around the world, noting that once again, Cuba is low on the list.

Generation Y makes a call for “freedom for Cuba” and thinks that the Internet is the way: “It occurs to me to use kilobytes, to take advantage of the cutting edge of a word that is also sharp and makes precepts grow more durable than the machete.”

Cubanoscope is a real-time news aggregator that publishes links to online newspapers, but also videos, tweets, and blogs about Cuba. The site was presented by David Chapet of Bloggers Cuba [es].