Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez Detained and Beaten

November 9, 2009

Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez says she was detained and beaten Friday, as she and fellow bloggers were walking to an anti-violence protest. She and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo were forced into a car in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, where she says three men who refused to identify themselves beat them and then left them in another neighborhood. A third blogger, Claudia Cadelo, was also briefly detained, but did not report injuries.

Sánchez described one of her attackers saying: "This is as far as you're going, Yoani, I've had enough of your antics." Sánchez' blog, Generation Y, which has earned her the Spanish Ortega y Gasset Prize and Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot Prize and receives an estimated 1 million hits per month, is highly critical of the Cuban government.

The assault on Sánchez comes less than a month after Cuban authorities denied her permission to travel to receive the Maria Moors Cabot Prize in New York. In addition to her blogpost describing the incident, she released the following statement on her Twitter account: "I'm recovering from yesterday's kidnapping, still in shock from the physical violence. Blogger spirit is intact."