Tag Archives: Cuba

Cuba government filtering mobile text messages, dissidents say

A Cuban flag flies at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, Cuba

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba’s Communist government is filtering mobile phone text messages for key words such as “democracy” and “human rights” and then blocking them, dissidents said on Monday.

An investigative report by blogger Yoani Sanchez and journalist Reinaldo Escobar concluded that text messages failed to reach their destinations if they contained Spanish words for democracy, human rights or hunger strike, among others, as well as the names of some dissidents.

Eliecer Avila, head of opposition youth group Somos Mas, which participated in the investigation, said 30 key words that triggered the blocking had been identified but there could be more.

“We always thought texts were vanishing because the provider is so incompetent, then we decided to check using words that bothered the government,” he said.

“We discovered not just us but the entire country is being censored,” he said. “It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is.”

It was not clear for how long the filter had been in place.

The full report was published by Sanchez’s online newspaper, 14YMedio.com.

State telecommunications monopoly ETECSA could not be reached for comment.

Cuba has repeatedly charged that the United States wants to use telecommunications to subvert the government and brands Sanchez and other opponents as mercenaries working with Washington.

Reuters on Monday unsuccessfully tried to send messages containing the words “democracy,” “human rights,” “Somos Mas” and Yoani Sanchez. Other messages containing the Spanish word for “protest” went through. The messages that did not reach their destinations appeared as “sent” on the users’ telephone.

Cuba arrived late to modern telecommunications, authorizing mobile phones in 2008 and Wi-Fi internet access only last year. Online, it blocks dissident websites and media it believes to be funded by the United States, but permits the websites of critical newspapers such as El Nuevo Herald and El Pais.

There currently are about 3 million mobile telephone accounts with local provider CubaCell, which is part of ETECSA.

Despite efforts by the Obama administration to link U.S. internet providers with the country as part of a detente begun in December 2014, Cuban authorities appear more interested in working with Russia on cyber-security, while China provides most of the Caribbean island’s communications technology.

Experts estimate that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Cuba’s 11.2 million residents has some Internet access, mainly through Wi-Fi, though it is sparsely used because of high rates.

Some 5 percent of the population enjoys home-based Internet, which requires special government permission.

(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bill Trott)

Cuba deploys army in effort to avoid Zika virus

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuban President Raul Castro called on the entire Cuban population to help eradicate the mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus on Monday and ordered 9,000 army troops to help stave off the disease.

Cuba has yet to detect a case of Zika but the outbreak is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean and is likely to spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

“It’s necessary for every single Cuban to take up this battle as a personal matter,” Castro wrote in a national message sounding the alarm over Zika, which is carried by mosquitoes that transmit the virus to humans and which is suspected of causing birth defects after infecting pregnant women.

Cubans should clean up potential environments for the Aedes genus of mosquitoes, said Castro, who also is general of the armed forces.

“The Revolutionary Armed Forces will assign more than 9,000 troops, among them active duty officers and reserve officers … to the anti-vector and cleanup efforts, with the additional support of 200 officers of the National Revolutionary Police,” Castro said.

The ruling Communist Party and the government have adopted an action plan under the direction of the Health Ministry to deal with the Zika that will also help combat the mosquito-borne diseases dengue and chikungunya, Castro said.

One Health Ministry employee, who asked not to be identified as she was not authorized to talk with journalists, said the country’s vast network of neighborhood doctors and clinics were watching for Zika symptoms and suspected cases would be quarantined in hospital wards prepared for an eventual outbreak.

“There are no confirmed cases yet but there will be. To date there have been two suspected cases that turned out negative,” said the employee, who has real-time access to epidemiological data.

The government, which has fumigated neighborhoods and homes for decades to contain dengue, put doctors on alert for the virus weeks ago and ramped up mosquito eradication efforts.

Military officers could be seen over the weekend, clip boards instead of rifles in hand, directing fumigation in Havana.

The WHO declared the outbreak an international health emergency on Feb. 1, citing a “strongly suspected” relationship between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size.

However, much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly.

(Reporting by Marc Frank and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Bill Trott)

After 1,000-year split, pope and Russian patriarch embrace in Cuba

HAVANA (Reuters) – Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill embraced and kissed on Friday in a historic meeting, uniting to issue a global appeal for the protection of Christians under assault in the Middle East.

Nearly 1,000 years after the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity split apart, the meeting at an airport terminal in Cuba was the first ever between a Roman Catholic pope and a Russian Orthodox patriarch.

“In many countries of the Middle East and North Africa whole families, villages and cities of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being completely exterminated,” they said in a joint declaration in apparent reference to violence by militant groups like Islamic State.

“Their churches are being barbarously ravaged and looted, their sacred objects profaned, their monuments destroyed.”

Cuban President Raul Castro stood to the side during the ceremony, enjoying another moment in the international limelight after receiving Francis last year and restoring diplomatic relations with the United States recently, meeting President Barack Obama in Panama in April.

The two religious leaders, guests of a Communist government, came together only a week after the encounter was announced. Such a meeting had eluded their predecessor, but Francis had issued a standing invitation to meet anytime, anywhere.

The moment came while Kirill was visiting the Caribbean island and Francis added a brief stop on his way from Rome to a long-scheduled visit to Mexico.

“Finally,” Francis said as he and Kirill entered through doors on opposite sides of a room at Havana airport to begin private talks. “We are brothers.”

Francis, dressed in white with a skullcap, and Kirill, wearing a tall, domed hat that dangled a white stole over black robes, joined arms and kissed on both cheeks.

“It is very clear that this is the will of God,” Francis said.

“Yes, things are much easier now,” Kirill said. Both men spoke through interpreters.

Their meeting carried political overtones, coming at a time of Russian disagreements with the West over Syria and Ukraine.

The Russian Orthodox Church is closely aligned with the Kremlin, which is in turn an ally of Cuba.

The Argentine pontiff helped the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba after more than five decades of estrangement.

The pope, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, is seeking to repair a much longer rupture. Eastern Orthodoxy split with Rome in 1054.

Modern popes have met in the past with the Istanbul-based ecumenical patriarchs, the spiritual leaders of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Those patriarchs play a largely symbolic role, while the rich Russian church wields real influence because it counts some 165 million of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta and Philip Pullella; Editing by Andrew Hay and Alistair Bell)

Putin may benefit from historic meeting of pope and patriarch

VATICAN CITY/MOSCOW (Reuters) – A meeting between Pope Francis and Russia’s Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Friday could not happen without a green light from President Vladimir Putin, diplomats and analysts say, and he may be one the beneficiaries.

In a landmark step towards healing the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, the two religious leaders will meet in Havana on the pope’s way to Mexico.

“There is no doubt the Kremlin took part in making this decision,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and former Kremlin adviser in Moscow. “Otherwise the meeting would not have happened.”

Putin has aligned himself closely with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), making Friday’s two-hour private meeting not just a religious event but politically charged as well, especially when Russia is at odds with the West over Ukraine and Syria.

“Putin clearly sees the value of his relationship with the ROC and the ROC’s relationship with the pope,” said a diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“He understands the pope is a big player on the world stage and I think that he would be happy about having the possibility of using the improved relations between the Vatican and the ROC to get the Kremlin’s view across to the Vatican,” he said.

Alexander Volkov, Russian church spokesman, said that while a joint declaration will dwell on the Middle East’s persecuted Christians, tensions between Russia and the West may be brought up in the talks.

“This is one of the burning issues and we can assume it will be reflected in the dialogue. It can’t be ruled out,” he said.

DIFFERENT POPE, WARMER TIES

Relations between Moscow and the Vatican have improved steadily since the reign of Pope John Paul II, a Pole who had an inbred suspicion of Russia and who died in 2005. But Francis is an Argentinian with no historical baggage associated with the East-West divisions of Europe after World War Two.

In 2013, Moscow was pleased after Francis opposed a proposed U.S.-led military intervention in Syria, a key Russian ally.

Last year, Catholics in Ukraine accused Francis of being soft with Moscow when he described violence in Eastern Ukraine as “fratricidal”. They saw it as a product of foreign aggression.

One commentator said Francis’ view was perhaps “blurred by ecumenical correctness” in the hopes of a meeting with Kirill.

In an interview with Reuters, Cardinal Kurt Koch, head of the Vatican office for Christian unity, was non-committal when asked if the meeting could help Putin. “I think Putin agrees with the meeting, but I can’t say more,” he said.

Russia’s ambassador to the Vatican, Alexander Avdeyev, said the two Churches organised the meeting but that it could “help politicians and diplomats” with policy decisions.

“The two Churches clearly understood that all threats and challenges in the world threaten both of them and cooperation has to be stepped up to fight nationalism and terrorism,” he told Reuters.

The meeting, which will put another historic notch on Francis’ legacy, came after two years of secret contacts in Rome, Moscow and Havana, Vatican and diplomatic sources said.

Agreement was clinched last autumn but the ROC wanted to keep it under wraps for several more months, one Vatican source said.

The Russian Church had long accused Catholics of trying to convert people from Orthodoxy after the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The Vatican denied the charges and both sides say that issue has largely been resolved.

One sore point remains the fate of church properties that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin confiscated from Eastern Rite Catholics in Ukraine and gave to the Russian Orthodox there. After the fall of communism, Eastern Rite Catholics took back many church properties, mostly in western Ukraine.

The meeting was brokered by Cuban President Raul Castro, who hosted the pope in Cuba last year. The Vatican helped arrange the rapprochement between Cuba and the United States.

(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Over 80,000 Bibles Sent To Cuba

In the midst of political debate over the U.S. re-establishing diplomatic ties with Cuba, a revival of Christianity is going unnoticed.

The SBC’s International Missions Board said they are sending over 83,000 Spanish-language Bibles to Cuba for churches throughout the island nation.  The SBC sent three 40-foot containers filled with Bibles from South Florida ports last week.

The shipment is the third since 1999 although this is the first shipment that has been directly sent from the United States.

A release from the SBC noted the large number of people choosing to follow Christ through the ministry of Cuba’s Eastern Convention.

“With the Eastern Convention reporting 29,063 professions of faith in 2014, the missionary noted that the Bibles potentially will cover the new Christians and only a few more,” the release stated.

The Bibles include large print Bibles for the visually impaired, study Bibles and Bible commentaries.

Cuba Builds First Catholic Church Since 1959

The first Catholic Church in 55 years is coming to Sandino, Cuba.

The construction is significant because a number of priests were exiled, jailed or killed in the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro.

“There is money to begin, building materials to begin, and we have the permissions to start, so everything is ready,” said Jorge Enrique Serpa Pérez, the bishop of Pinar del Río, according to Breitbart News.

Members of the American Catholic Church, especially those serving Cuban refugees and exiles in Florida, were very skeptical about the reason for the government allowing the new church to be built.

“First, I am concerned that normalizing diplomatic ties without addressing [Fidel] Castro’s horrendous human rights record serves as a defacto endorsement for one of the most oppressive regimes in recent history,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

“As a result of Castro’s totalitarian rule, millions live in poverty, thousands lie in prisons, and many have lost their lives. In addition, the God-given rights of Cuban citizens are held hostage to governmental persecution.”

Father Cyril Castro says that the new church is proof that the faith is not lost in Cuba.

“People can say that Catholicism was lost in Cuba, but it’s not true,” he added. “The family of faith has endured. In fact, we are showing the fruit of those roots.”

American Released From Cuban Prison

An American who went to Cuba to set up internet connections for Jews inside the communist country has been set free after a deal between the Cuban government and the White House.

Cuban officials took Alan Gross in December 2009 while he was working as a subcontractor for the U.S. government’s Agency for International Development.  Gross was on his fifth trip to the country to install internet for Cuban Jews that would bypass the government’s restrictions.

Gross has been in failing health in the last year.  A pastor who visited Gross said that his teeth had fallen out and he was suffering from severe arthritis and other conditions.  U.S. officials said Gross would be hospitalized upon his return to the country for treatment of his diseases.

Three Cuban spies were released as part of the deal to free Gross.  The three are part of the “Cuban Five” who were jailed in 2001 in Miami for spying.  The other two members of the five were released following completion of their sentences.

The President is calling for America to ease restrictions and to normalize relations with Cuba.

Fidel Castro: U.S. and Israel To Blame For ISIS

Former Cuban president Fidel Castro is blaming the United States and Israel for the creation of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS.

Castro says that Israel’s intelligence agency teamed up with U.S. Senator John McCain to create the terrorist entity.  Castro made the claim in an article he penned for the Cuban state media and translated by Russia Today.

“Many people are astonished when they hear the statements made by some European spokesmen for NATO when they speak with the style and face of the Nazi SS,” Castro wrote.  “Adolf Hitler’s greed-based empire went down in history with no more glory than the encouragement provided to NATO’s aggressive and bourgeois governments, which makes them the laughing stock of Europe and the world.”

The 88-year-old Castro has officially been out of power since his resignation but many western diplomats say that he is still consulted on any major decision for the country.  His views on America and Israel likely will continue to be the stance of the nation until his death.

Earthquake Strikes South Florida & Cuba

An earthquake struck off the coast of Cuba on Thursday, shaking buildings both in that nation and in the Florida straits.

The quake struck just before 4 p.m. local time about 100 miles east of Havana.  The U.S. Geological Survey said that the closest city to the epicenter was Corralillo.

The quake was so strongly felt in Old Havana that buildings had to be temporarily evacuated because of the shaking.  The quake reportedly shook buildings for over 30 seconds.

“Everything was moving,” NuriaOquendo told Fox.  “You could really feel it, very clear, very defined.”

The USGS said that the quake was only six miles deep and not strong enough to develop tsunami.