In late June Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, along with three other executives met with Cuban authorities to discuss, in his own words, “promoting a free and open Internet.”
“Over the next decade, approximately five billion people will become connected to the Internet,” wrote Schmidt in an op-ed piece that appeared in the March 11 edition of the New York Times. “The biggest increases will be in societies that, according to the human rights group Freedom House, are severely censored.”
Google executives also met with several Cuban government opponents, such as dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez, who created the first independent media of the island.
“The visit took several months of preparation and it was the first time Google came to Havana to talk about technology and Internet access,” she wrote on her site 14ymedio.com.
Schmidt described the Cuban digital system as “stuck in the 90s,” a byproduct of censorship, imported Chinese infrastructure and the U.S. trade embargo, established in 1960 by President Dwight Eisenhower after Fidel Castro expropriated American companies and properties.
In addition to these historical restrictions, Cuban authorities cite the country’s lacking finances as the reason they want to limit Internet access on the island to universities, research institutes, government agencies or authorized personnel such as some doctors or journalists.
However, Amnesty International is calling for freedom of expression for Cuban journalists who are restricted by the constitution. Cuba’s Constitution prohibits private media ownership, and requires correspondents to be active Communist Party members. The process doesn’t just limit journalists physically and intellectually, but hinders the Cuban citizens as well, because these measures obstruct their access to information that isn’t inline with government.