14ymedio.com

The report assesses the development of projects such as the site of narrative journalism El Estornudo (The Sneeze) and the in-depth articles on local issues in Periodismo de Barrio (Neighborhood Journalism), as well as “the sustained quality of 14ymedio, which provides readers with stories and perspectives that they can’t find anywhere else.”

“Space is opening up. Things are moving and the status quo is cracking,” Miriam Celaya, a contributor to 14ymedio, told CPJ. “But Cuba hasn’t changed as much as we would like.”

“The Cuban people deserve answers to numerous pressing questions,” said the organization, adding, “It would be foolish to expect that substantive answers to these questions will be forthcoming anytime soon. But they would become significantly harder to ignore if more Cuban journalists were asking them. For the sake of their country’s future, it is hoped that more Cuban journalists will decide to join those who have already crossed red lines.”

CPJ lists among the elements that hamper the progress of press freedom in Cuba “harassment and intimidation from authorities, a legal limbo caused by outdated and restrictive press laws, and limited and expensive access to the internet.”

In addition, arbitrary arrests and citations for independent journalists, according to the report, remain common despite recording a decline in recent years. “Fears of similar action or arrest prompt many independent journalists to self-censor,” journalists interviewed for the report told CPJ.

The organization believes that the restoration of diplomatic ties between Washington and Havana has made it difficult for the Cuban government to justify censorship of the press as a means to protect the country from US aggression.

The main obstacle to the development of a free press, according to CPJ is limited access to Internet, as broadband connections are not available in most Cuban homes and the service is expensive. The low internet penetration in the country (Cuba has one of the lowest rates of internet access in the Western Hemisphere) means that the audience for new media is concentrated essentially in the US and Europe, while access to independent news sites such as 14ymedio is blocked, leaving island residents to seek alternative solutions such as the Weekly Packet.

“Despite facing many obstacles, Cuba’s journalists and bloggers have found innovative ways to distribute content, including using flash drives and underground computer networks, and sending articles via the state email system,” the report said.

The study reports that the use of Nanostations, a device that helps extend wifi signals and that is available on the black market, is also spreading.

The report concludes with a series of recommendations to the Cuban Government, among which are requests for changes in the constitutional and legal framework to ensure that journalists can carry out their work without fear and can create private or cooperative media, the promotions of a critical state media, and better access to the Internet. In addition, the organization demands an end to arrests and practices of intimidation, and asks that the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression be allowed in the country

The CJP asks, in addition, for the Organization of American States (OAS) to act as mediator for the visit of the Rapporteur and to consider the Cuban government’s history on human rights in its work.

Heirs to the “end of history,” these young people, who are today between 20 and 35, are confronted with the challenge of changing the face of a region urged to reinvent itself. They bring with them pragmatism and a certain dose of cynicism… which never hurts. Nonconformists, they want to fight against the system they know, but without the epic outbursts of their grandparents, nor the elevated expectations of their progenitors. They reject heroics and acts of immolation.

To transform our societies, these “millennia” count on newly released tools. They have come of age in the most extensive period of technological innovation ever known and their way of appreciating the world passes, for most of them, across the screen of a cellphone. These creatures, hinges between the 20^th and the 21^st centuries, stamp their imprint on today’s digital communication. Politicians place in their hands the management of social networks, online campaigns and crowdfunding. In these labors they are accumulating the experience that one day will allow them to exercise governance through the web.

Despite the inequalities that continue to characterizer Latin America, with regards to the quality of educational systems and the purchasing power of households, digital communication has been a frequent companion in the lives of these young people. Internet, cellphones and social networks have been their companions since they reached the age of reason. In the alphabet mastered by these offspring of the baby boomers, G represents Google and a bluebird with a T is Twitter. Thus, it is difficult to convince them that phones were once hard-wired and that in the past, if you wanted to buy something, you had to pay with cash. They have never smoked on an airplane, nor made coffee through a cloth strainer.

Environmentalists, vegans, pansexuals, multilinguals and irreverents, millennials increasingly choose distance learning and electronic commerce. They resist paying for the music they consume and have drawn from videogames the idea that life is expressed in a simple and hard formula: “Action versus time.”

They were small children when the darkness provoked by successive military coups in the Southern Cone was left behind. In many cases they have inhabited weak democracies, marked by corruption, limitations on freedom of expression and concentration of power in the hands of a few. Forbes magazine has predicted that in 2025 they will represent 75% of the world’s labor force, but few have ventured to calculate their political participation and their positioning in the mechanism of power. They are already in the offices of Government palaces, still as assistants, interning or listening. Crouched in preparation for taking power.

Among the pending issues they will face in Latin America, the delayed democratization of the armed forces will be up to them. Circumscribing those uniformed actors who have been unwanted protagonists in the political system, and shoring up the fragile civil power, will be a difficult task in a region where epaulettes have ruled for centuries. Skeptical, the millennials have seen the images of the fall of the Berlin Wall a thousand and one times, but they know that the hammers that destroyed that concrete were wielded by hands that now carry a cane or wave to their grandchildren from the window.

Now, they are listening as the last echoes of the longest conflicts in the hemisphere fade out in Colombia, but all around them are the shouts of populism and the skirmishes of political intolerance. The strict limits of right and left, that have defined the region for half a century, ring in their ears like the squeaks from an inexperienced DJ who doesn’t know how to mix tunes.

These millennials exhibit a high degree of political discontent, and are especially critical of the quality of the education systems. Without being a homogenous population, they resemble each other in the struggle for space for innovation and entrepreneurship. In the social networks, they have managed to bring together all the pieces of a territory whose principal diplomatic challenge continues to be integration. Tired of the acronyms of so many useless regional mechanisms, they have dissolved borders through the effectiveness of a Like on Facebook, and have bought products on Amazon. They embody globalization.

Even in Cuba, “the island of the disconnected,” with the lowest rate of Internet penetration in the hemisphere, they are seen filling the parks where the government has opened wifi zones. They can be recognized because they stare constantly at the screens on their phones, even in bed, in the bathroom or behind the wheel. They have an intense need to share information, so they are censorship’s natural enemies. On a continent where television has shaped the leaderships and dictators have behaved more like soap opera stars than statesmen, millennials prefer to consume audio and visual media online and a la carte, rather than be tied to programming directed by others.

From the images of themselves receiving their diplomas to their most intimate moments, a good share of them want to post it all online. They feel that the times of privacy have come to an end and life now is public. On the social networks we have seen them conquer their acne, get the braces off their teeth, and show off a new beard or hair extensions. They are willing to exchange personal information for a more intense social experience. Their children are a part of the experiment and appear on the web, smiling, naïve, devoid of filters. They are born, love, protest and die in front of a webcam. They create relationships based on horizontality, in part because the networks have inculcated them with the conviction that they are interacting with their peers, without hierarchies.

To Latin American millennials all that is left is optimism, and in most cases they believe their nation’s best time is still ahead. They don’t dare to say out loud that the future of the continent rests entirely on their decisions, but they will shape it according to their will. They are the survivors of that tumultuous 20^th century in which they were born, but which they do not feel a part of. With such antecedents, could they have turned out any better?

Editor’s note: This text was published on Sunday 25 September 2016 in the Spanish newspaper El País. 

EU member states have participated in “monitoring and have reported on the use of short-term detentions and violations of freedoms of association and assembly,” says the text.

The document refers to the first EU-Cuba talks on human rights that took place in Brussels on 25 June 2015, in which representatives of the island pledged “to conduct future talks with the EU based on universally recognized human rights.”

The EU and Cuba held negotiations for a Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement. On Thursday the European Commission has proposed to the countries of the European Union to support the Agreement and has requested that the EU’s Common Position on Cuba – which “encourages a process of transition to a pluralist democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” – in force since 1996, be repealed.

The report explains that the EU representatives in Havana have continued to interact with “various representatives of Cuban civil society” and those contacts have contributed to the analysis and monitoring of the situation of “freedom of expression and association, freedom of belief and labor rights.”

However, the text acknowledges that “holding open meetings with leading government critics remained impossible, particularly for ministers and senior officials from the EU and the Member States on an official visit.”

The EU has maintained close contact with former prisoners of the 2003 Black Spring still residing on the island and has spoken with the Cuban authorities on the right of the activists to leave the country. Currently these former political prisoners are allowed to make only one trip out of the country.

The work of the European Union in Cuba also focuses on “strengthening the capacity of women entrepreneurs, preventing violence against women, [and] strengthening the capacity of organizations representing people with disabilities.”

Topics such as “sex education, support for private initiative and the entrepreneurial spirit in urban development, agriculture and energy” are also on bloc’s agenda with Cuba.

“The EU is undertaking an ongoing effort to expand the participation of independent civil society organizations in its political and cooperative work,” the report concludes.

Monier Núñez said that the influx of people, especially young people who frequent the area, is one of the most important factors in making the decision to install this new internet access point.

Of the 30 Wifi zones planned for 2016, 17 have been installed. ETECSA says the rest will become available when the necessary equipment is available.

Iris Duran, company spokeswoman, said that all municipalities in Havana have at least one Wifi zone, and some of them, depending on their size and demographics, have up to five areas.

The most recent opened on 17 September with six new Wifi points in Marianao, Guanabo, Guanabacoa, Arroyo Naranjo, San Miguel del Padrón and El Cerro.

According to data from ETECSA, some 250,000 connections have been recorded at the 1,006 public Wifi access point in Cuba. Although the number of wireless access zones installed in parks and on centrally located avenues in some cities has tripled in 2016, the density of service remains very low for a population of about 11.1 million, with about one Wifi zone for every 11,000 people.

The sports fans complain about the lack of coverage in the official press about what happened and the lack of details about the judicial process.

“They don’t say hardly anything and you have to hear about it from the antenna (the illegal satellite dishes hidden around the city) or on the street,” explains Samuel, a follower of the sport who was sharing his opinions on Wednesday with the other regulars of the “rock.” “I found out because my aunt gets the signal in her house with the news from Miami, because here they have just given us drabs and drabs,” complained the young man.

Some of those assembled lacked confidence in the conclusion of the Finnish court. “This is a bed (a conspiracy) that they set up for these boys in order to harm Cuban sports,” insists Victor Zuñiga, a retired welder who remembers having seen “a lot of humbug like this against our people.”

No women participated in the “Hot Corner” debates this Wednesday, where the sports talk is traditionally engaged in by men. “It if were my daughter that had happened to, it wouldn’t matter whether they were top-flight athletes, I would want justice and would want to see them behind bars,” says Gretel, 49, who was nearby.

The Cuban Volleyball Federation merely communicated in an official note, in which it made no assessment of the facts. 14ymedio tried to contact the body, but in all calls made as of this writing it was only possible to communicate with an answering machine.

Mika Ruotsalainen, Minister-Counselor of the Finnish Embassy in Mexico, which handles consular affairs for all the Caribbean countries, told this newspaper that there are no extradition treaties between the Republic of Finland and the Republic of Cuba.

The diplomat said the Cuban athletes will have to serve their sentences in a Finnish prison.

The Pinkanmaa court imposed sentences of five years in prison for Rolando Cepeda Abreu, Abraham Alfonso Gavilán, Ricardo Norberto Calvo Manzano and Osmany Santiago Uriarte Mestre, and three and a half years for Luis Tomás Sosa Sierra.