AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
PRESS RELEASE
October 13, 2009

Amnesty International Calls on Cuba to Lift Travel Restrictions to Allow Blogger to Travel to New York to Collect Journalism Prize

Human Rights Organization Says Yoani Sanchez is Being Punished for Exercising Freedom of Expression

(New York) -- Amnesty International today called on the Cuban government to allow blogger Yoani Sánchez to travel to New York to receive an international journalism award at Columbia University on Wednesday. The blogger, who writes about daily life in Cuba on the Generation Y website, has been refused permission to travel outside of Cuba four times in two years.

“Restricting freedom of movement by denying an exit visa to Yoani Sánchez constitutes an unnecessary punitive measure for the peaceful exercise of her right to freedom of expression and association,” said Kerrie Howard, deputy director, Amnesty International's Americas program.

“The immigration office has just confirmed that they maintain the prohibition on letting me leave the country,” Sánchez wrote on her Twitter page on Monday. She has been refused permission to travel outside Cuba three previous times.
Sánchez was awarded a special citation for journalistic excellence by the board of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the oldest international award in journalism, for her blog about daily life in Cuba on the Generation Y website, which receives 1 million hits a month. The prize at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University honors outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean.

“The Cuban authorities often routinely deny exit visas and bar from leaving their country those who, like Yoani Sánchez, express critical views of the government,” said Howard.

In May, the Cuban authorities denied Sanchez permission to fly to Madrid to accept an award for digital journalism.

She is known as an outspoken advocate for freedom of expression and unrestricted access to internet. Her blog, Generaion Y, has been intermittently blocked by the authorities and cannot currently be read within Cuba.

Background:

Cubans wishing to travel abroad must obtain an exit visa called a tarjeta blanca (white card). Although Raúl Castro announced in 2008 that the government would ease travel restrictions for its citizens, the situation relating to dissidents does not appear to be changing. Independent journalists, human rights defenders and political opponents have been restricted from leaving Cuba to attend events abroad.

In 2008, blogger Sánchez was barred from leaving Cuba to receive the 2008 Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism. In 2005, representatives of a group formed by relatives and friends of 75 people imprisoned in a March 2003 crackdown, the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), were not allowed to travel to receive the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, one of the leaders of the Varela Project, was awarded the Sakharov prize in 2002 and was not allowed to travel to Strasbourg to receive it.

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