HAVANA: Despite large anti-government rallies, Cuba has banned access to social media and messaging platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram since Monday, according to global internet monitoring firm NetBlocks. On Tuesday, the platforms in Cuba were still partially affected, according to London-based NetBlocks, which was “expected to hinder the flow of information from Cuba.”
A request for response from the government was not immediately returned. Telegram and Facebook Inc., which controls Instagram and WhatsApp, did not respond. Twitter Inc, a social media site, said it had discovered no evidence of its service being blocked. On Sunday, thousands of Cubans marched in cities and villages around the country to protest the country’s economic crisis and response to the virus, with some calling for the end of communism. The government claims the protests were staged by US-funded counter-revolutionaries who exploited public outrage over an economic crisis partly caused by a decades-old trade boycott. State-run media reported on Tuesday that Raul Castro, who stood down as head of the ruling Cuban Communist Party in April, attended a meeting of the political bureau on Sunday to discuss the “provocations,” underscoring the government’s worry.
Miguel Diaz-Canel, the party’s leader and president, announced in April that he would continue to engage Castro on subjects of critical importance.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that believing the rallies were organized by the US would be a “grave mistake” that would prove the administration was not listening to the Cuban people’s views.
The difficult situation in Cuba, according to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is “essentially” attributable to the United States’ economic embargo against the island.
On Tuesday, his Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said he had spoken with his Cuban counterpart to establish what kind of humanitarian aid might be beneficial to the Caribbean island.
PERMANENT UNREST
The protests, which were unusual in a country where public dissent is strictly regulated, looked to have calmed down by Sunday evening as additional police and soldiers were deployed to the streets as Diaz-Canel urged followers of the regime to go out and fight to protect their revolution.
Nonetheless, according to five neighbors and video footage seen by Reuters, a demonstration took place late Monday in the southern Havana enclave of La Guinera.
Hundreds of protestors clashed with police, yelling “down with communism” and other anti-government slogans, according to two residents who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
According to expatriate rights group Cubalex, some 150 people were arrested during or after the largest wave of protests in various towns on Sunday, with only 12 verified released thus far.
“We made it plain in the various interrogations that no one was ordering us to take to the streets from overseas, that no one was paying us a centave to do what we did,” theater director Yunior Garcia, who was arrested at a protest in Havana on Sunday, said on his Facebook page.
He claimed to have been released on Monday, but police officers informed him that he was still being investigated.
The advent of mobile internet two and a half years ago has been a crucial role in Cuban protests, giving Cubans more of a platform to express their dissatisfactions and allowing information to spread swiftly when people are on the streets.
On Tuesday, witnesses in the capital told Reuters that they still didn’t have access to mobile data.
This year, there have been more mobile internet outages. The entire country went out for fewer than 30 minutes at around 4 p.m. on Sunday, amid the peak of protests in Havana, according to network monitoring company Kentik. Governments throughout the world are increasingly requesting that social media platforms remove specific content, and in some cases, their services are restricted or prohibited during rallies. Nigeria said on June 4 that Twitter would be prohibited indefinitely in the country, days after the company erased a message by President Muhammadu Buhari. (Sarah Marsh in Havana and Elizabeth Culliford in New York contributed reporting; Nelson Acosta and Reuters TV in Havana and Sheila Dang in New York contributed additional reporting; Richard Chang edited the piece.)/n
