Six Prominent Cubans in Stockholm. By Eva Belfrage.
Six Prominent Cubans in Stockholm
By Eva Belfrage
May 21, 2013
Today six Cuban personalities, well known for their pens and voices and accurately moulded descriptions and analysis of social, political and economic life, conditions, hardships and opression in Cuba, were gathered for a meeting in Stockholm to give glimpses of their work and views on the situation in Cuba.
For those who daily follow the situation in Cuba, these six dissidents’ voices together with many others, are listened to as the actual providers of news and facts, to the shame of the well paid international news agencies and journalists stationed in Havana, who allow themselves to bow for the Castro dictatorship.
This group of visiting dissidents are very articulate and highly respected Cubans, who each of them in their individual capacity play an important role for the shaping of a growing dissident civil society in Cuba. All of them use innovating ways to fool censorship and the connectivity to Internet. All of them have their own blog and some of their writings are translated to English and even to other languages. They all twitter and quickly spread news around about arrests, abuses, forced evacuations, hurricane situation, cholera etc, which international news agencies and official national news ignore.
The pioneer in the group is the today world famous blogger and self made internet specialist Yoani Sánchez, who has taken upon herself to teach dissidents the use of internet and cell phones a “la cubana”. After years of attempts to travel, she finally managed to leave Cuba for a four months roundtrip in Latin America, the US, and Europe to talk about Cuba and answer questions from both critics and admirers. She is number one among the Castro-regime’s hate objects, and has therefore suffered tough confrontations with embassy-organized mobs on her trip abroad. But Yoani manages these often vulgarly screaming people in a friendly and elegant way with her mastering of the words, and her interviews in TV and different forums have been enormously successful.
Miriam Celaya is a well established blogger, with a socio- anthropologic background who also writes for international net media and often elaborates interesting and analytical articles on the social political situation in Cuba.
Roberto de Jesus Guerra is the director of the only independent news agency in Cuba, Hablemos Press, with some thirty correspondents who report from all corners of Cuba. This agency has revealed important stories like the death of cold and malnourishment of over 36 mental patients, the cholera outburst last year and they also provide a monthly report on arrests of dissidents, political prisoners and acts of repudiation against dissidents by the SS police and their paramilitaries. The Agency’s own journalists often suffer persecutions and one of them was detained for more than half a year without trial for having revealed the cholera outbreak.
Laritza Diversent is an independent lawyer who plays an important role in interpreting and explaining law to the dissident community. She is a pedagogic and excellent writer, but has lately dedicated most of her time to her independant legal advice practice.
Antonio Rodiles is a mathematician and nuclear physician, who has studied abroad for several years, but decided to return to Cuba to contribute to a change. He started a forum called Estado de SATS, where serious discussions between dissidents often on an academic and specialist level are taking place about the political, economic, judicial and cultural situation in Cuba and the future. The discussions are professionally video filmed and widely distributed in the country. This organization is also the initiator of a national campaign “For another Cuba” which calls on the Cuban government to ratify the International Human Rights, signed by Cuba a couple of years ago.
Eliecer Ávila, the youngest in the group, is a computer specialist, who during his academic years was a prominent student leader, who seriously believed in the government but got frustrated when he realized that they were not interested in any change or improvement and became an outspoken dissident. He is an eloquent and analytically competent person with the aspiration of preparing himself for the forming of a political party.
The one hour seminar in Stockholm was too short to go any deeper into the situation in Cuba, but it was a nice and informative meeting essentially about the human rights situation in Cuba.
For the editors of CDV it was a great event to be able to meet and hug these wonderful Cubans, who struggle so hard, risk their own safety and offer so much of their lives to the future of Cuba. We have followed and republished there words and writings for so many years now and they have really become an important part of us and CDV.
Here are a few photos from this event:
From left to right: Antonio Rodiles, Roberto Jesús Guerra, Laritza Diversent, Miriam Celaya, Eliecer Ávila; Yoani Sánchez.
Antonio Rodiles and Roberto de Jesús Guerra
Laritza Diversent
Roberto de Jesús Guerra
Miriam Celaya
Eliecer Ávila and Yoani Sánchez
__________________