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10/13/09 - Reuters (London) - Cuba stops blogger traveling to NYC to accept
prize

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cuba will not allow dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez to
travel to the United States to receive a journalism prize, Columbia
University said on Tuesday.

Sanchez, 34, whose "Generacion Y" blog (www.desdecuba.com/generaciony) is
critical of Cuba's one-party Communist government, was due to receive the
university's Maria Moors Cabot Prize on Wednesday in New York.

The prize honors journalists covering the Western Hemisphere whose work has
furthered inter-American understanding.

"I am disappointed that the Cuban government refuses to let Yoani Sanchez
travel to New York to receive a Maria Moors Cabot citation," Nicholas
Lemann, dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, said in a
statement.

"The Cuban government ought to value Ms. Sanchez's work as a sign that young
Cubans are ready to take Cuba into a better future -- one that will have the
free press the Cuban people deserve," he said.

Sanchez's blog is widely read abroad and has won international acclaim. She
was selected by Time Magazine as one of the world's most influential people
in 2008.

But her Cuban readership is limited because Internet access is closely
monitored and restricted on the island.

Cuban authorities, who often condemn internal critics as U.S.-backed
traitors, have accused her of being a "professional dissident" at the
service of the "anti-Cuban propaganda machine."

Sanchez's blog, which chronicles life in Cuba, get 14 million hits a month.
She is also read by 6,415 followers on her microblogging Twitter account
(twitter.com/yoanisanchez).

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Anthony
Boadle)