Cuba: the internet, a great ally of unprecedented demonstrations, cut off on the island
Social networks have been instrumental in the protests taking place in Cuba.
© YAMIL LAGE / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
Havana and Washington are passing the buck of the responsibility of the demonstrations which upset the country Sunday with cries of “
Freedom!
"And"
Down with the dictatorship!
»Linked to the country's economic situation.
For more than a year, the epidemic and the American sanctions have plunged Cuba into a deep crisis that is getting harder on a daily basis.
These unprecedented manifestations can be analyzed as a form of catharsis in which social networks have played a determining role.
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With our correspondent in Havana
,
Domitille Piron
Social networks have played such a decisive role that the internet was cut off on the island on Monday. It was a first demonstration filmed live on Facebook on Sunday morning, July 11 in the small town of San Antonio de los Baños, near Havana, which had a snowball effect. In this locality, it was the power cuts lasting a dozen hours during the day that pushed the population to show their
fed up
in the street.
And on social media very quickly, Cubans all over the country said to themselves that they were going to go out on the streets.
One of the slogans chanted during
these demonstrations
was “
patria y vida
”, in reference to this protest song which pleads for a change in Cuba, and which was massively broadcast on the internet.
Vincent Bloch, professor at NYU University and specialist in Cuba, explains how calls to protest were relayed on the networks.
Social media allowed people to join the protests with less fear and apprehension and to understand that there were plenty of people ready to do the same.
Vincent Bloch, teacher at New York University and specialist in Cuba
The mobile network cut to counter the new demonstrations
Since 2018 with the arrival and development of the mobile network on the island, there has been an awakening of Cuban civil society and a rise in criticism of the authorities.
The Cuban Communist Party also believes that it is necessary to wage an ideological battle on social networks, but it would seem that this crusade is lost in advance, because by nature the Internet is uncontrollable.
Except to cut the valves of course and that is what happened on Monday.
To avoid new gatherings and the organization of new demonstrations, the mobile network has been cut.
The use of VPNs and other censorship circumvention devices are becoming indispensable in Cuba.
The population fears that without the internet, repression will become tougher, far from the eyes of the world.
Since 2018, the mobile Internet has developed a lot in Cuba, so the demonstrations have been widely relayed on social networks.
As explained
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