May 7, 2008...4:36 pm
Cuban Refuses To Give Blogger Yoani Sanchez Visa To Collect Prize
Cuban authorities have refused to give a travel visa to Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez so she can receive one of Spain’s top journalism awards in Madrid on Wednesday, said Spanish newspaper El Pais which hands out the awards annually.
Last month the newspaper announced it has awarded 32-year-old philologist Yoani Sanchez, whose blog “Generacion Y” chronicles the woes daily problems citizens face, the Ortega y Gasset prize in Spain for digital journalism.
“We still don’t know if she will be able to come,” an El Pais official told
AFP, adding the island’s communist government was “complicating” her exit.
Sanchez has said her request for a travel visa is the “perfect test” to see if Cuba’s new President Raul Castro, who succeeded his ailing brother Fidel Castro
earlier this year, is serious about opening up the regime.El Pais praised Sanchez’s “vivacious” writing style and “shrewdness” in overcoming hurdles to freedom of expression in Cuba when it announced her prize.
The blog, hosted on a server in Germany, is Cuba’s most popular, receiving 1.2 million hits a month.
Since becoming president, Raul Castro has taken modest steps to improve living standards, including allowing Cubans to stay in tourist hotels, take out mobile phone contracts, and buy appliances such as computers, motorbikes.
Source - Caribbean Net News
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