MIAMI, United States. – Around midnight this Friday, hundreds of people took to the streets of the municipality of Los Palacios, Pinar del Río. Several videos broadcast live on social networks show a crowd crossing the streets of the town in the direction of the municipal headquarters of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) while they banged pots and chanted protest slogans.
In the recordings, the protesters are heard shouting loudly “We are hungry!”, “Turn on the power!”, “Díaz-Canel singao!” and even “Down with the dictatorship!”.
Shortly after 12:30 this morning all live broadcasts originating from Los Palacios stopped, suggesting an alleged Internet connection outage by Cuba’s telecommunications monopoly, ETECSA. In similar scenarios, the company has already limited its services to prevent new sources of protest from arising.
Friday July 15
2:50 a.m.: The protest in front of the government headquarters in Central Havana has been dissolved by the regime’s political police, as CubaNet has verified from the scene. At this time there is a strong police presence on public roads, there is no news of the protesters so far.
2:20 a.m.: From Havana, the activist Agustín Figueroa Galindo, from the Movement for the Freedom of Cuba Coronel Vicente Méndez, denounces that State Security has come to his house to warn him that he cannot go out on the street. “Officer Alejandro has told me that I cannot set foot outside the house,” he told CubaNet.
2:00 a.m: A graph of Internet Outage Alertsshared on Twitter by the Inventory Projectconfirms the Internet blockade in Cuba during midnight.
1:35 a.m.: The internet has been restored for the moment in several areas of the country, although the service is intermittent.
1:25 a.m.: Reports of internet blackouts are multiplying nationwide. This newsroom tried to communicate with its collaborators via Whatsapp but the application shows that the messages do not reach the recipients.
1:10 a.m.: The journalist from CubaNet Camila Acosta confirmed by phone that the internet connection had also been interrupted in Havana.
(News in development)
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