September 3, 2010
By AFP
VIENNA —”Sanchez’s tremendously important work provides a glimpse into what is otherwise a closed world,” Alison Bethel McKenzie, director of the Vienna-based International Press Institute, said in a statement.
She “represents a future where the power of the Internet can be harnessed to promote free speech.”
Sanchez began a blog, Generation Y, in 2007 that now counts over one million readers. However, access to the site was banned in Cuba in 2008.
To bypass this, Sanchez now emails her comments to friends abroad who post her notes on the Internet.
In 2008, Time Magazine in the United States named her one of the 100 most influential people. The following year, her blog was listed as one of the 25 best blogs of the year by the magazine.
Harassed and beaten up on separate occasions, Sanchez has noted on her blog that she is constantly watched by state security agents.
But she refuses to stop writing: “If you are insulted by the mediocre, the opportunists, if you are slandered by the employees of the powerful but dying machinery, take it as a compliment,” she wrote.
IPI named this year eight World Press Freedom Heroes, from Sri Lanka and Gambia to Turkey and South Africa, bringing the total to 60 as it celebrates its 60th anniversary.
The institute holds its annual world congress in Vienna and Bratislava on September 11-14.
Copyright 2010 AFP