BY: CAPITOL HILL CUBANS
Cuban dictator Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, had the audacity (and arrogance) this week in Tokyo -- one of her many foreign junkets -- to say that "it makes her laugh" when people talk about freedom of expression in Cuba and (incredulously) asked, "Who silences Cubans?"
An attitude befitting an Emperor's daughter.
The quick and easy answer is: Her family.
However, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez answered her (in detail) through a string of 140-character tweets -- for Mariela's family tries to silence Yoani through all other means of communication and technology.
Here are Yoani's tweets (translation courtesy of Babalu Blog):
Mariela Castro declared that "it makes [her] laugh when they talk about freedom of expression in Cuba." It makes me feel sad, impotent and desirous of change
"Who silences Cubans?" asks Raul Castro's daughter and I'm going to try to answer her 140 characters at a time:
Cubans are silences by the shadows that watch us and tap our phone lines and stigmatize those that are different
The permits for exit and entry to one's own country silence Cubans, buying their muteness with a travel authorization
They attempt to silence us also with repudiation rallies against dissidents, using our own children as shock troops
They silence Cubans when they expel a journalist from a media outlet for writing what he thinks and when they isolate a blogger for same
They silence Cubans when they have supposed calls for debate but then don't include all parties
They silence Cubans with privileges that are really crumbs, with slogans from last century
Those who travel with money from the state's coffers silence Cubans while Fariñas remains here without his travel authorization
They silence Cubans when they hide the fact that we are David and that Goliath is that huge government infrastructure which feeds on us like a vampire
They silence Cubans when they force us into a car, arrest arbitrarily and threaten us with the impunity of a uniform
Those that advocate for the acceptance of sexual differences silence Cubans when they don't recognize ideological and and political plurality
Those that answer a moderate and civilized question with an insult like "insignificant hen" silence Cubans
Those that block websites, censor books and confiscate satellite dishes silence Cubans
Those that inherit the country's government as if it were a feudal estate silence Cubans
Those who make the presidential chair into a genetic monopoly owned by one bloodline silence Cubans
Those who prevent the nonconformist from having a single minute on the radio or on TV or a space in the newspaper silence Cubans
However all the things that silence us are also making us speak, to break the silence
The process of recovering their voice is slow. But what a joy when Cubans won't have someone to silence them.
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