Cubalog.eu

Photo: /

The postman knocked on the door and after giving me his congratulations and asking me to sign a receipt form he handed me a telegram. I saw a piece of urgent paper with my address and with a short message. When I asked him for the envelope, he calmly replied there had not been any. It was a kind of double surprise – my niece was sending me a birthday card from Matanzas and the local messenger was bringing the text open and with a delay of three days.

It was no coded message, nor a date, invitation or a notice of utmost urgency, yet still, I was rather perplexed about the fact that the envelope was missing. How many people have read my telegram? What would have happened, had it been a secret message? Do the post clerks actually know that Article 57 of the Cuban Constitution says that “correspondence is inviolable” although “it can be suspended, opened and examined in cases set forth by law”. And do these people actually know that “the same principle shall apply to cable, telephone and telegraph communication”?

I am not familiar with the law related to the above-mentioned constitutional provision which I believe provides for a list of necessary conditions that have to be met when infringing the “inviolability of correspondence”, however, I logically deduce that our right to mail secrecy may be broken in cases affecting the security of state, nation and economy or “on grounds of public profit or social interest”.

I guess my birthday does not fit in these grounds and I believe the secrecy of correspondence is infringed by post clerks on a regular basis and, in the best of the cases, out of ignorance.

To suppress a fit of paranoia, I remembered as several years ago the Mexican psychoanalyst Fredo Arias de la Canal used to send me books, cassettes and letters and as these always arrived several months late with the envelope open.

It also came to my mind that my friends often learn about the letters they were sent from abroad only when the family member who had written them comes home for a visit. What can we do if we do not receive out letters and if telegrams arrive without envelopes? Are the postmen as kind and diligent or is this due to “cases set forth by law”?

The postman who knocked on my door is rather informal yet very polite. Perhaps he personifies the infringement of our right to inviolability of our correspondence which is just like that. Yet he may as well not be aware that we actually have any such right, simply because he knows nothing of Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by Cuba in 1948 and which has recently been ratified by our Government, and nor does he know anything about its other provisions which pre-empt that anybody interfere into our privacy and familiar life, including our home and correspondence.

Since mine was just a simple birthday telegram, I did not go to the post office to file a complaint about the missing envelope. I am happy that as from now the communications personnel know when my birthday is, but anyway, next year I will tell my niece to send me her greetings by a carrier pigeon.

2010-09-08 / Will Weissert - AP

Report: Castro blasts Ahmadinejad as anti-Semitic

HAVANA — Fidel Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes and questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during interviews with an American journalist he summoned to Havana to discuss fears of global nuclear war.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, blogged on the magazine's website Tuesday that he was on vacation last month when the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington — which Cuba maintains there instead of an embassy — called to say Castro had read his recent article about Israel and Iran and wanted him to come to Cuba.

Goldberg asked Julia Sweig, a Cuba-U.S. policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, to accompany him, and the pair spent portions of three days talking with Castro.

Cuba's state-controlled media reported Aug. 31 that Goldberg and Sweig met with Castro and attended the dolphin show at Havana's aquarium, but the blog was the first to reveal details of what they discussed. ...more

2010-09-08 / Expatica News Service

Two more Cuban political prisoners arrive in Spain

Two more Cuban political prisoners arrived in Madrid Tuesday, bringing to 30 the number of dissidents who have reached Spain following their release under a deal between Havana and the Catholic Church.

The two men, Victor Arroyo and Claro Sanchez, traveled to the Spanish capital on two separate commercial flights accompanied by 16 close family members, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Arroyo was serving a 26-year prison term while Sanchez had been jailed for 15 years for dissident activities.

Cuba agreed on July 7 to release the remaining 52 of 75 dissidents who were arrested in a March 2003 crackdown who are still behind bars in a landmark deal that was brokered by Madrid.

The deal came after dissident hunger striker Guillermo Farinas nearly starved to death.

If all 52 dissidents are freed, it will be the largest release of Cuban prisoners since 1998 when 300 dissidents were spared jail time following a visit by then pope John Paul II.

2010-09-08 / Badge Greenslade (Guardian UK)

Cuban blogger is press freedom hero

Cuban blogger Yoani Maria Sánchez Cordero has been named by the International Press Institute as its 60th World Press Freedom Hero.

Sánchez's blog, Generation Y, is an acerbic critique of life in Cuba, and a telling reminder to the world of the restraints on free speech and expression on the island.

Launched in 2007, the site was rendered unavailable in April 2008 by the Cuban authorities. Since then, Sánchez has managed to keep the blog alive through a series of ingenious measures and is thought to have a regular readership of more than one million.

She has been refused permission to travel outside of Cuba at least six times in the past two years. In 2008, Time magazine named her one of the world's 100 most influential people, noting that "under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practised what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech." ...more

Cuba Blog

Telegram

Report: Castro blasts Ahmadinejad as anti-Semitic

Two more Cuban political prisoners arrive in Spain

Cuban blogger is press freedom hero