Castro dictatorship passes regulations further criminalizing online content, further restricting internet access

Less than two years ago the Castro regime was already criminalizing online content.

Committee to Protect Journalists, August 19, 2021

Cuba passes regulations criminalizing online content, further restricting internet access

August 19, 2021 12:16 PM EDT

 

Police officers in Havana on July 12, 2021. Govt passed new restrictions on internet content. (Reuters/Alexandre Meneghini) 

Miami, August 19, 2021 — The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned the enactment of new telecommunications regulations in Cuba that will further censor information on the island, and called for their immediate repeal.

On August 17, the Cuban government enacted new regulations that criminalize the sharing of “false” and “offensive” information online, and grant authorities expanded powers to restrict online speech, according to the text of the regulations and press reports.

“With this new set of vaguely defined internet regulations, Cuban authorities are clearly seeking to bar the country’s citizens from expressing their discontent and accessing information freely online,” said CPJ Latin America and Caribbean Senior Researcher Ana Cristina Núñez. “No matter how many new laws and decrees Cuban authorities pass, however, Cubans have the right to unfiltered and unbiased news. These regulations should be repealed immediately.”

The director of cybersecurity for the Cuban Ministry of Communications, Pablo Domínguez Vásquez, said in a press conference that the new rules empowered the government to document cybersecurity breaches, and said that “when these people [perpetrators] are identified and they are in the country, penalties will be imposed,” according to press reports.

The regulations include Decree 35 on “Telecommunications, Information and Communication Technologies and the Use of the Radioelectric Spectrum,” Resolutions 105, 107, and 108, pertaining to cybersecurity and network usage, and Decree 42, relating to information and communications technologies.

Article 69 of Decree 35 empowers the state telecom monopoly ETECSA to shut down networks and services that transmit information that is false; offensive or harmful to human dignity; against personal and family privacy; against collective safety, general welfare, public morality, or respect for public order; or which constitutes “a means to commit illicit acts.”

Article 53(b) of Decree 42 obliges internet service providers to suspend, in coordination with authorities, the service or terminate the contract of users who transmit such information.

The regulations do not define “false information” or terms such as “collective safety, general welfare and public morality.” The regulations state that they may be applied regardless of other criminal, civil, or administrative actions against suspects for those actions.

Resolution 105 lists online offenses including the “dissemination of false news” and “defamation with an impact on the country’s prestige,” as well as “harmful diffusion,” which it defines as the dissemination of content that “incites demonstrations or other acts that can affect public order.”

That resolution also covers “cyberterrorism,” which it says includes actions whose purpose is to subvert the constitutional order; suppress or seriously destabilize the operation of political institutions, economic, and social structures of the state; or to compel public institutions to do so.

Resolution 105 does not enumerate any specific penalties for those offenses.

“With these rules, the Cuban regime is legalizing internet blackouts, and the possibility of cutting off access to the internet and mobile phone services in a personalized way,” Norges Rodríguez, director of the Cuban digital rights project YucaByte, told CPJ in a phone interview.

Cuban authorities have previously interrupted internet service for the entire island and for specific users, as CPJ has documented. The new regulations follow anti-government protests in July, during which protestors shared videos of the demonstrations online, and the government interrupted access to the internet and social media platforms, as CPJ documented at the time. Authorities have imprisoned people for sharing those videos, according to media reports.

These new regulations add to the government’s control over social media content under Decree 370 of 2019, which bans disseminating “information contrary to the social interest, morals, good manners and integrity of people” on public networks, and which has been used to persecute journalists, as CPJ has documented.

“These new regulations are now being integrated into the strategy of the Cuban regime regarding the internet: on the one hand it opens access to the web, but on the other it accompanies it with legal and technical mechanisms that allow for the implementation of censorship,” Rodríguez said. “This is a farce.”

CPJ emailed the Cuban Ministry of Communications for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.

https://cpj.org/2021/08/cuba-passes-regulations-criminalizing-online-content-further-restricting-internet-access/

World Press Freedom Day 2020: A Call for Journalism Without Fear or Favour in Cuba

"Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." - Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948

May 3rd, since December 1993 has been recognized by the international community as World Press Freedom Day.  It is observed on the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of press freedom principles drafted by African Journalists and passed on May 3, 1992 at a UNESCO seminar on "Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press," held in Windhoek, Namibia.

Today, this blog will focus on press freedoms in Cuba, or better put their systematic absence.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released the 2020 edition of their World Press Freedom Index. revealing that Cuba dropped from 169th in press freedom in 2019 to 171st in 2020 edging out Saudi Arabia to become part of the 10 worst ranked countries in the index.

The Paris based press freedom organization disclosed in their 2020 summary how coverage of Cuba in the international press is slanted and often repeating official news that echoes the dictatorship because those who are critical are expelled from the country creating a chilling effect on those who remain behind.

CUBA
Constant ordeal for independent media

A self-styled socialist republic and one-party state, Cuba has continued year after year to be Latin America’s worst media freedom violator. Miguel Díaz-Canel’s election as president in April 2018, after 59 years of repression under the Castro family, has made no difference. The regime maintains an almost total media monopoly and the constitution prohibits privately-owned media. The few Cuban bloggers and independent journalists are threatened by the government and watched by security agents, who often take them in for questioning and delete information in their devices. Journalists regarded as especially troublesome are often arrested and jailed. The authorities also control the coverage of foreign reporters by granting accreditation selectively and expelling those regarded as too “negative” about the government. The gradual improvement in Internet access nonetheless constitutes grounds for hope about the future of press freedom in Cuba.

171 in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index

https://rsf.org/en/cuba

Cuban journalists continue to be targeted and silence in the time of COVID-19 when independent journalism is more important than ever. Yoel Bravo Lopez, a citizen journalist from Villa Clara who in mid-April reported over social media an increase in COVID-19 cases at a retirement home in Santa Clara, was arrested on Monday, April 20, 2020 by State Security, interrogated for several hours, fined 3,000 pesos ($120) and threatened with “going to prison just like Jose Daniel Ferrer” if he continued disseminating information the government considers “contrary to the public interest.” This is not an isolated case. Mónica Baróon detained on Friday, April 17, 2020 was also interrogated, fined 3,000 pesos ($120) under the Decree Law 370 rule that regulates the use of the internet in Cuba, and also threatened with prison. Mónica Baró Sánchez was awarded the Gabo Prize 2019 for her article ’The blood was never yellow.’ Other journalists targeted in recent weeks are Yoe Suárez and Waldo Fernández Cuenca, of DIARIO DE CUBA; and Camila Acosta and Julio Antonio Aleaga, of Cubanet. 

Little wonder that Cuba in 2020 is among the 10 worse countries for press freedom in the world according to Reporters Without Borders.

However, it is also important to point out that this has been a terrible reality for the past 61 years with the arrival of the Castro dictatorship to power. Prisoners of conscience have been an every existent reality through all that time that continues into the present.

Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces

Since this is World Press Freedom Day we are focusing on the case of imprisoned Cuban journalist
Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces, who is in poor health and has been in prison since September 11, 2019. His son, Roberto José Quiñones Castro, who resides in the United States, has been campaigning for his dad's release, picketing the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC.

Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces was unjustly imprisoned for five years for being an independent attorney in Cuba in 1998. No longer able to practice as a lawyer upon his release, he became an independent journalist.

Roberto Quiñones was physically assaulted on April 22, 2019.

On April 22, 2019 Roberto de Jesús Quiñones was beaten up for covering the trial of a religious couple sentenced to prison for homeschooling their kids. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported on April 24th what had happened:

On April 22, at around 2:00 p.m., Cuban police agents detained Quiñones, a contributor to the news website CubaNet, as he was standing outside of the Guantánamo Municipal Tribunal, according to CubaNet and the Association for Press Freedom (APLP), a Cuban press freedom organization. At the time of his detention, Quiñones was covering the trial of two Cuban evangelical pastors facing charges for homeschooling their children, CubaNet reported. While being transported in the police car, agents beat Quiñones, injuring his mouth, tongue, and right thumb and causing an inflammation in his right ear, his wife told APLP.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists in the same report "Cuba is one of the most hostile environments for the press in the world, and ranks among CPJ's 10 Most Censored Countries."

Picket on August 13, 2019 outside the Cuban embassy in Washington DC.

 On April 27, 2020 Cubanet released a new video in Spanish by Roberto José Quiñones Castro warns that his dad's health is deteriorating and again calls for the release of his father, Roberto de Jesús Quiñones.


Below is a letter by three prominent international human rights organizations calling for the release of Roberto de Jesús Quiñones released today on World Press Freedom Day.

May 2, 2020

To: President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez
President of the Republic of Cuba
Office of the President
Hidalgo Esq. 6
Plaza de La Revolución,
CP 10400

Sent via email: despacho@presidencia.gob.cu

Dear President Díaz-Canel,

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Amnesty International, and Article 19 Mexico and Central America Office are writing to call for the immediate release of jailed journalist Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces amid the sweeping COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ most recent annual survey conducted on December 1, 2019, there were at least 250 journalists behind bars around the world, including in Honduras, Venezuela, and Cuba. On March 30, CPJ published an open letter to world leaders urging the release of all journalists imprisoned for their work. The situation of Cuban journalist Roberto Quiñones appears particularly dire, so we are reiterating that call to you on his behalf at this time of grave public health concern.

Roberto Quiñones, a lawyer and contributor to the news website CubaNet, has been imprisoned in the Guantánamo Provincial Prison since September 11, 2019, where he is serving a year-long correctional labor sentence. A Guantánamo court sentenced Quiñones in August 2019 after he refused to pay a fine for charges of “resistance” and “disobedience” stemming from his April 22, 2019, arrest while reporting on a trial.

In September 2019, Amnesty International named Quiñones a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned solely for peacefully exercising his freedom of expression, and called for his immediate and unconditional release. In November 2019, representatives of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, as well as the Special Rapporteurs for Freedom of Expression from the UN and IACHR, informed your government that the Working Group was investigating Quiñones’ case as a potential case of arbitrary detention and violation of due process.

Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights guarantee the right to “seek,receive and impart information” freely, and include specific protections for journalists. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Cuba signed in 2008, provides for the right to hold opinions “without interference” and the right to freely “seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds,” including on issues of public interest.

We remind you that Cuba must guarantee these rights, which are particularly relevant to the current global context.

Cuba also has a duty to protect its population amid the COVID-19 pandemic without discrimination, including those deprived of their liberty. According to the World Health Organization, “People deprived of their liberty, and those living or working in enclosed environments in their close proximity, are likely to be more vulnerable to the COVID-19 disease than the general population.”

Imprisoned journalists have no control over their surroundings, cannot choose to isolate, and are often denied necessary medical care. In addition, some individuals appear to be at particular risk of severe illness or death linked to COVID-19, including older individuals and people with pre-existing medical conditions, according to the WHO.

Roberto Quiñones is no exception. In letters published by CubaNet on October 1 and March 5, Quiñones has described his conditions at the Guantánamo Provincial Prison, which include overcrowding, poor food and water quality, and lack of adequate medical attention. Quiñones was reportedly subject to retaliation for publishing this information in the form of “disciplinary measures,” including denying access to phone calls and barring him from outdoor spaces in the prison.

Quiñones has served more than half of his year-long sentence, during which time he has suffered from escalating health problems, including psoriasis that, according to CubaNet, has worsened in detention, and significant weight loss due to gastrointestinal complications, according to his wife. With detainees at increased risk from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cuban government must release Roberto Quiñones.

Mr. President, no journalist should have to choose between silence or prison. On this World Press Freedom Day, we urge you to release Roberto Quiñones, protect the free flow of information, and guarantee that all journalists in Cuba are able to perform their fundamental role in society, free of any reprisals.

Sincerely,

Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ)Amnesty International
ARTICLE 19 Mexico & Central America Office

Source: https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AMR2522562020ENGLISH.pdf

Committee to Protect Journalists issues report on internet access and journalism in Cuba

"The restrictions also mean that despite the rise of independent journalism and blogging in Cuba, there are often more readers outside the country than on the island."- Committee to Protect Journalists

Illustration points to important division in Cuba with regards to internet

The Castro regime appears to be changing tactics in their control and censorship of the internet. The Committee to Protect Journalists have published an important and detailed report by Alexandra Ellerbeck titled: Connecting Cuba: Staying connected in an offline world  that is too long to reproduce here but is available online.

However the Committee to Protect Journalists offers the following recommendations, although brief, shed light on the lack of freedoms on the ground in Cuba:

To the Cuban government

1. Implement constitutional and legal reforms to ensure full respect for freedom of expression and to allow journalists to work freely without fear of reprisal.
2. Amend the restrictive legal framework that bans privately owned media ownership and ensure freedom of speech and the press in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Cuba is a signatory.
3. Allow the creation of press cooperatives or privately owned media so that journalists are not forced to operate in a legal limbo.
4. Foster an environment that encourages the state press to operate independently and report critically.
5. End the practice of summonses, brief detentions, and harassment of independent journalists.
6. Make internet access more affordable and extend connectivity to the internet without restrictions.
7. Accept the 2015 request by David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, for an invitation to visit Cuba as part of his mandate.

To the Organization of American States

1. Request authorization for the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression to conduct a mission to Cuba to assess the state of press freedom and freedom of expression, and report its findings and recommendations publicly.
2. Ensure any dialogue with Cuba regarding its participation in the multilateral body includes consideration of its press freedom record, including harassment and intimidation of journalists, summonses, and brief detentions.

Committee to Protect Journalists designates Cuba as the 10th most censored country on Earth

A top ten list you do not want to be on.

A Cuban sells newspapers in Havana. All media in Cuba is controlled by the Communist regime, leaving little space for independent reporting. (AFP/Adalberto Roque)

10. Cuba

Leadership: Raúl Castro, who took over the presidency from his brother, Fidel, in 2008.

How censorship works:Despite significant improvements in the past few years-such as the elimination of exit visas that had prohibited most foreign travel for decades-Cuba continues to have the most restricted climate for press freedom in the Americas. The print and broadcast media are wholly controlled by the one-party Communist state, which has been in power for more than half a century and, by law, must be "in accordance with the goals of the socialist society." Although the Internet has opened up some space for critical reporting, service providers are ordered to block objectionable content. Independent journalists and bloggers who work online use websites that are hosted overseas and must go to foreign embassies or hotels to upload content and get an unfiltered connection to the Internet. These critical blogs and online news platforms are largely inaccessible to the average Cuban, who still has not benefited from a high-speed Internet connection financed by Venezuela. Most Cubans do not have Internet at home. The government continues to target critical journalists through harassment, surveillance, and short-term detentions. Juliet Michelena Díaz, a contributor to a network of local citizen journalists, was imprisoned for seven months on anti-state charges after photographing an incident between residents and police in Havana. She was later declared innocent and freed. Visas for international journalists are granted selectively by officials.

Lowlight: Though the government has for the most part done away with long-term detentions of journalists, author-turned-critical blogger Ángel Santiesteban Prats has been imprisoned since February 2013 on allegations of domestic violence. The writer and other local independent journalists maintain that he was targeted in retaliation for writing critically about the government on his blog, Los Hijos que Nadie Quiso (The Children Nobody Wanted.)

Google satellites potentially a challenge to totalitarian rule

"Between the cable and the wall! So is the governmentt of Cuba with Google satellites to give Internet to users who do not have access." ... "Official spokesperson said we'll have Internet at home by end of 2014. I think it will be before that with Google Satellites :-)" - Yoani Sanchez, over twitter on June 26, 2013

First four google satellites launched to provide internet to remote locations

As has been the case for the past 35 years with the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights inside of Castro's prisons, change is taking place in Cuba despite the best laid plans of the Castro dictatorship. The Committee to Protect Journalists in 2011 listed the Cuban totalitarian regime as one of the online oppressors that uses the denial of access as their chief mean of controlling the internet..

The latest evidence for this is to be found with regards to the internet and cell phones. Cuba has the lowest internet and cell phone coverage in the hemisphere. Nevertheless, inventive Cubans have found the way to circumvent government controls and get access, however limited , to both.

The Cuban government and its agents of influence try to blame economic sanctions for their policy of limiting and controlling information but the facts do not back them up.

President Obama on April 13, 2009 directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to take the needed steps to:

• Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.
• License U.S. telecommunications service providers to enter into roaming service agreements with Cuba’s telecommunications service providers.
• License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.
• License persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to activate and pay U.S. and third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio and satellite television services provided to individuals in Cuba.
• Authorize the donation of certain consumer telecommunication devices without a license.

It was the Cuban government that showed no interest in a fiber-optic cable linking the United States and Cuba in 2009 not the Cuban embargo. Instead it went with a fiber-optic cable linking Cuba and Venezuela. Meanwhile internet access has not improved for the average Cuban.

Now officials are announcing that this is going to change, but it is interesting to note that the news arrives at the same time that Google has launched satellites to bring inexpensive internet to people in remote areas, including Cuba.

The regime is no doubt trying to figure out how to jam the Google satellites, or restrict the content that reaches Cubans while at the same time waging a cyberwar against what it perceives as its ideological adversaries. Perhaps one way to do it is to finally allow regular Cubans to enjoy improved internet connectivity via the cable from Venezuela that they have firm control over. Although, the regime may have to abandon the its chief strategy of denying Cubans access to internet they have at least nine other tactics used by other repressive regimes to limit the internet's liberating potential: web blocking, precision censorship, infrastructure control, cyber attacks on exile run sites, malware attacks, internet kill switches, detaining bloggers, violence against online journalists, and criminalizing uncensored access to internet ( ask Alan Gross about that last one.)

Castro Regime makes Committee to Protect Journalists top ten list of online oppressors

The 10 Tools of Online Oppressors

The world’s worst online oppressors are using an array of tactics, some reflecting astonishing levels of sophistication, others reminiscent of old-school techniques. From China’s high-level malware attacks to Syria’s brute-force imprisonments, this may be only the dawn of online oppression. A CPJ special report by Danny O’Brien

DENIAL OF ACCESS

Key country: Cuba

Bloggers such as Yoani Sánchez face significant technical and political hurdles. (Reuters/Desmon Boylan)

High-tech attacks against Internet journalists aren’t needed if access barely exists. In Cuba, government policies have left domestic Internet infrastructure severely restricted. Only a small fraction of the population is permitted to use the Internet at home, with the vast majority required to use state-controlled access points with identity checks, heavy surveillance, and restrictions on access to non-Cuban sites. To post or read independent news, online journalists go to cybercafes and use official Internet accounts that are traded on the black market. Those who do get around the many obstacles face other problems. Prominent bloggers such as Yoani Sánchez have been smeared in a medium accessible by all Cubans: state-run television. Cuba and Venezuela recently announced the start of a new fiber-optic cable connection between the two countries that promises to increase Cuba’s international connectivity. But it’s unclear whether the general public will benefit from connectivity improvements any time soon.

Tactics in practice

• Bloggers face huge obstacles
• Sánchez called a “cybermercenary”

Citizens' Reasons: episode 4 dedicated to independent journalists in Cuba with the participation of Juan González Febles, Julio Aleaga, Luis Cino, José Antonio Fornaris, Amarilis Cortina, Pedro Argüelles, José Daniel Ferrer and as moderator Reinaldo Escobar.

Razones ciudadanas 4 from Yoani Sanchez on Vimeo.

CPJ: 10 Cuban Journalists face arrest, intimidation during Communist Party Congress

From the Committee to Protect Journalists

New York, April 20, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a string of recent arrests of journalists from the Havana-based news outlet Centro de Información Hablemos Press, preventing them from reporting on the Communist Party Congress held in Havana this week. CPJ called on the Cuban government to cease its persistent harassment of independent journalists and allow them to report freely.

In the past three weeks, at least 10 correspondents from Hablemos Press, known for its reporting on human rights and opposition activities, have been detained in police stations, put under house arrest or threatened with arrest. One journalist, Enyor Díaz Allen, was assaulted by government supporters and then held by police for four days. The arrests coincide with the Sixth Communist Party Congress, the first in 14 years, which began in Havana on Saturday.

"This spike in short-term arrests of journalists during the Communist Party Congress is evidence of the Cuban government's unchanged attitude toward the independent press, despite the releases of imprisoned journalists in recent months," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas. "We call on Cuban officials to stop detaining and harassing journalists."

Despite the landmark release this month of Alberto Santiago Du Bouchet Hernández, the last journalist jailed in Cuba, CPJ and local human rights organizations have observed an increase in instances of low-intensity persecution--short-term detentions, house arrests, smear campaigns, and intimidation--of members of Cuba's independent press.

Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez

Hablemos Press director Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez told CPJ in an interview Tuesday that the timing of the arrests was obvious. "The regime is afraid that there will be a popular uprising during the Party Congress and wants to prevent journalists from reporting on what's going on," Guerra said.

According to CPJ research, 10 journalists from Hablemos Press have faced arrest and intimidation in the past three weeks:

--Guantánamo correspondent Enyor Díaz Allen, 28, was arrested Friday, along with pro-democracy activist Yoandris Beltrán Gamboa, and held until Tuesday afternoon, Díaz told CPJ. As he was walking Friday evening, two unidentified men approached Díaz shouting pro-Castro slogans and attacked him. Díaz defended himself but sustained a fractured arm and wounds requiring stitches on his head. About 20 minutes into the attack, police agents arrived and broke up the fight. The police took Díaz to the hospital. After Díaz's wounds were treated, state security agents took him to the Parque 24 police station and held him for four days. Díaz was charged with minor assault, and his attackers walked free, Guerra said.

Díaz has reported on police abuses, education issues, and opposition activities in Guantánamo province and is also a member of the youth democracy movement. According to Guerra, a common tactic used by Cuban authorities to intimidate critics is have government supporters attack dissidents who are later arrested. Díaz told CPJ that he believes the attack was related to his reporting.

--Raúl Arias Márquez and Elier Muir Ávila, correspondents in Morón and Ciego de Ávila provinces, were detained and threatened on April 5 and again on April 6 by police and state security agents at Márquez's home, where the journalists frequently meet. Both have been working for Hablemos Press for about two months and had reported on a student brawl that left two dead.

--On March 31, Hablemos Press correspondent Idalberto Acuña Carabeo was arrested at his home in Havana by state security agents demanding he hand over photos he took while covering a labor protest hours before. When Acuña refused to comply, he was taken to a local police station, interrogated and threatened for 24 hours, Hablemos Press reported.

--Luis Roberto Arcia Rodríguez, Hablemos Press correspondent in Mayabeque province, was put under house arrest in his home in San Jose de las Lajas on April 16 and held there for 12 hours to prevent him from traveling to Havana to meet with other journalists during the communist congress, Guerra said. According to Guerra, eight state security and police agents prevented the reporter from leaving his home.

--Sandra Guerra Pérez, Hablemos Press correspondent in Melena del Sur, was put under house arrest by more than 20 police and security agents on April 16 who blocked her from leaving her house until the evening of April 18. She had been reporting on a series of sugar cane field fires in the area as well as on the conversion of abandoned schools in the countryside to prisons. According to Roberto Guerra, the house arrest was intended to keep Sandra Guerra from traveling to Havana during the Party Congress.

--On April 15, two state security agents appeared at Hablemos Press's headquarters in central Havana and warned four journalists including Roberto Guerra that they would be arrested if they left their homes during the Party Congress. Guerra was also warned that he could face imprisonment for the videos that he has posted on Hablemos Press's Web site that show victims of official repression.

http://www.cpj.org/2011/04/journalists-face-arrest-and-intimidation-during-pa.php