Cuba Denies Exit to Pro-Democracy Blogger Invited by Brazil

Cuba Denies Exit to Pro-Democracy Blogger Invited by Brazil
February 05, 2012, 1:43 AM EST
By Joshua Goodman

(Updates with Sanchez's comments in fourth paragraph.)

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Cuba's best-known pro-democracy blogger said she
was denied permission to leave her country after Brazil granted her a
visa ahead of President Dilma Rousseff's state visit to the communist
island last week.

"There's no surprise," Yoani Sanchez said in a posting on her Twitter
account today. "They again deny me permission to leave. It's the 19th
time they violate my right to enter and leave my country."

Sanchez, a critic of Raul Castro's government on her Generation Y blog,
requested permission to travel to Brazil next month so she could attend
the screening of a documentary in which she appears. While she's been
barred from leaving Cuba for the past four years, expectations she might
be allowed to exit this time increased after Brazil granted her a visa
on the eve of Rousseff's visit this week.

After Rousseff failed to meet with Sanchez and other activists during
the three-day trade mission to Havana, the blogger complained on Twitter
that the Brazilian president came to Cuba "with her wallet open and her
eyes shut."

Rousseff, who was inspired by Cuba's revolution to take up arms against
Brazil's military dictatorship in the 1960s, said she would not get
involved in what is an internal Cuban matter.

"Brazil gave the visa to the blogger," she told reporters in Havana.
"The rest is not a matter for the Brazilian government."

Brazil's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Cuba's decision when
contacted by Bloomberg News.

While blocked from traveling abroad, Sanchez openly criticizes Castro's
government online, and has emerged as a leader among a group of young
dissidents who describe the daily travails life in Cuba through
difficult-to-access social media. She was invited to Spain after winning
the Ortega y Gasset journalism prize in 2008. Many of her chronicles are
published by newspapers throughout Latin America.

--With assistance from Ray Colitt in Brasilia. Editors: Harry Maurer

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