Cuba Censors Cyber Critic With Block on Island's Popular Blog

Cuba has blocked access to the country's most popular blog, signaling an apparent government crackdown on a new generation of cyber critics. The blog, Generación Y, received 1.2m hits last month, but its writer, Yoani Sanchez, said Cubans could no longer visit her web page.

Attempts from the island to view desdecuba.com/generaciony and two other Cuban blogs which share the server in Germany prompt an error alert, though the site can be viewed outside Cuba.

"The anonymous censors of our famished cyberspace have tried to shut me in a room, turn off the light and not let my friends in," Sanchez wrote in her most recent post.

Analysts said the crackdown underlined the communist authorities' determination to keep tight control despite some cautious moves towards economic reform and greater openness since Fidel Castro stood down, and his brother, Raúl, replaced him as president.

As the most-read blogger Sanchez, 32, a philosophy graduate, who does not disguise her identity, was seen as a litmus test of official tolerance for dissent. "I think this action is directed at a phenomenon that was getting out of their hands," she told the southern Florida newspaper the Sun-Sentinel. "I don't think they're coming after me personally. I think they're moving against a phenomenon of which I am a part."

Her husband, Reynaldo Escobar, a journalist, said he was surprised the clampdown had not happened sooner. "It's interesting that at a time when people are waiting for the government to lift restrictions, they would apply more restrictions," he said. Critical bloggers occupy a grey area in Cuba; neither legal nor illegal, they form an underground network that vents frustration at economic hardships and lack of freedom. Old Havana has just one internet cafe, a state-owned enterprise charging £2.50 an hour for computer use, a sum that is a third of the average Cuban monthly salary.

Raúl Castro has urged greater candidness over corruption and inefficiency, and eased restrictions on the sale of electronic goods, including computers.

In her postings Sanchez said these minimal changes were hardly enough to break the sense of suffocation and stagnation in the country.