Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières, or RSF) officially published their annual report of the “List of Internet Enemies” today. Cuba has a prominent place in the report: it is the only Western Hemisphere country in the ranks. RSF actually calls Cuba “one of the most backward Internet countries,” and reports that only 2% of the population is online. Cubans must go to public access points in order to check their email, where the service is expensive and activity is monitored for subversive language by Cuba’s Supervision and Control Agency. A national network exists, but is limited to government websites. Meanwhile, the penalty for posting “counter-revolutionary” articles on foreign websites is 20 years in prison, and illegally connecting to an international network earns a 5 year sentence. Search engines like Yahoo! and Google are entirely blocked, and the web addresses for others, like BBC, Le Monde and Nuevo Herald, automatically redirect to government sites.
“The internet represents freedom,” RSF reports, “but not everywhere.”
The other countries included on the list of 13 Internet Enemies are Belarus, Burma, China, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Ukbekistan and Vietnam. Libya, Maldives and Nepal opened themselves sufficiently over the last year to be removed from the RSF list.
