A challenge to the understanding of the totalitarian regime

The irritation of Cuban university students climb until it leads to a collective mobilization that expanded in the country after the announcement of Etecsa of differentiated mobile data packages for students in the high centers of studies.

The measure, which was intended A unemployment of assistance to school activities In the next few hours.

This Wednesday, the University of Medical Sciences of Cienfuegos joined the student protests that began on May 31, after the state monopoly of telecommunications warned about the limitation of national recharges at 360 CUP per month and the need to acquire additional packages in freely convertible currency (MLC).

The University Student Federation (FEU), in its national instance, questioned the lack of transparency of Etecsa and warned that «a fair country cannot be built if Internet access is limited.»

Similar statements published other faculties on social networks, but, in some cases they were subsequently erased, while official spokesmen attributed to exiles the writing and dissemination of the communications.

The president of the FEU, Ricardo Rodríguez González, accused alternative media of «fantoches» and promoting «hate» and «betrayal» around what he called «dialogues of respect and proposals» at the university.

«The first thing is that students, like any other social sector, have the right to protest against things that affect them, in the way they deem appropriate,» he said, in conversation with Martí News, Cuban journalist and researcher José Raúl Gallego, settled in Mexico.

He added that, if at first the regime tried to use the FEU, «a parastatal organization» to present the pronouncements as an example «of respect for the diversity of opinion, because that was complicated», after that more radical statements have come to light exhorting the assistance to classes until Etecsa reconsiders the increase in tariffs.

«Well, he began to change the speech and have tried to present it as a strategy from abroad, but the truth is that they are the students claiming for something that affects them, and not only to them, also, to the rest of the population,» Galician said.

Cuban students demand the reversal of the rates announced on May 30 and the direct exchange with the Etecsa authorities to analyze and propose solutions where the entire population is involved.

Gallego stressed that the call to a “teaching break” “completely challenges the logic of a totalitarian regime that cannot afford this type of initiatives because, in addition, and I think it is the most important thing, they can be contagious for the rest of the population, more in an environment where, in the month of May, popular protests have reactivated with the blackout that more protests generate in people. ”

The demands have not been answered by the university authorities, but they have said that, although they do not have concrete answers, they have held meetings with Etecsa in order to solve them.

In a meeting with executives of Etecsa, in the Manuel Sanguily amphitheater, students from the University of Havana ratified their determination to maintain teaching strike in rejection of new Internet rates that qualify as an aggression to the Cuban people.

Wave statement claims free access to information

The Academic Freedom Observatory (OLA) issued a statement this June 4 in which it supports the claims of Cuban university students and their right to convene a stoppage of teaching activities as a protest to the high Internet prices announced by Etecsa.

«We make this statement, anchored in what UNESCO establishes in this regard, and UNESCO considers that access to information and communication through the Internet is essential for full participation in a society in conditions of democracy and to foster development,» news omara Ruiz Urquiola, director of the observatory, told Martí News.

«The university is at the base of any development policy of a society, regardless of the political system, it is impossible to think of a country without access to the Internet,» he added.

Ola said in his statement that the attitude of university students before the current violation of digital freedom is «a legitimate expression of rejection of new repressive policies and the socio-economic crisis that crosses all aspects of life in the country.»

«The class treatment that is being given to Internet access in Cuba is tremendously harmful. A deepening of class differences is being developed where a very small group of people can have access to the Internet, while the vast majority does not,» said Ruiz Urquiola.

«Our students, for the most part, are humble people, come from families that make a lot of sacrifice so that their children can reach the university and cannot sustain the cost of the Internet. We understand that these government measures are measures that directly helerate the educational process, which violate the right to access to quality education,» he said.

In this sense, Leonardo Fernández Otaño, OLA researcher, highlighted the Internet accessibility problem in the country, and how it affects the university community “due to the constant need to access the information and online resources”.

«We support and accompany this situation of demand and rights required by the University Student Community, while ratifying our commitment to monitor and accompany respect for human rights in the academic space.»

The institution stressed the lack of representativeness of the student mass in the FEU «alibi in its independence by the regime and emphasized that» the basis of social mobility lies in the possibility of training its human resources, this guarantor of any notion of social justice being. «