At her blog Generation Y, the brave Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez has posted President Obama’s responses to seven questions she submitted to him.
Obama prefaced his answers as follows:
Thank you for this opportunity to exchange views with you and your readers in Cuba and around the world and congratulations on receiving the Maria Moore Cabot Prize award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for coverage of Latin America that furthers inter-American understanding. You richly deserve the award. I was disappointed you were denied the ability to travel to receive the award in person.
Your blog provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba. It is telling that the Internet has provided you and other courageous Cuban bloggers with an outlet to express yourself so freely, and I applaud your collective efforts to empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology. The government and people of the United States join all of you in looking forward to the day all Cubans can freely express themselves in public without fear and without reprisals.
The most positive result of this will be to raise Yoani’s profile and make it harder for the Cuban regime to silence her– harder, but unfortunately not impossible.
Yoani has also submitted six questions to Raúl Castro, president of Cuba. We eagerly await his response.
(Via The Lede and Lerterland.)