Cubans Used Homemade Radios to Avoid the Internet Shutdown. Now They Are Being Jammed Too
Oliver JJ Lane
16 Jul 2021
Communist Cuba has engaged in a massive campaign of radio jamming this week in response to protesting Cuban citizens taking to the airwaves – often with homemade radios – to get news in and out of the country after the regime turned off the internet.
Cuba’s state-run telecommunications firm severely constricted the access of ordinary citizens to swathes of the internet in recent days, with social media and messaging apps all impacted. As Breitbart News reported this week, the anti-information move comes amid a rising tide of anti-government protests on the island, which are being violently repressed by the regime.
Resourceful Cubans were able to sidestep the government’s attempt to crack down on the flow of information on and off the island, however, by using Cuba’s proximity to Florida and the availability of hobbyist amateur radio operators to keep talking. Relatively simple, low-power, homemade radios allow voice communication on common civilian frequencies between Cuba and the Southern United States now, as it did decades ago in the pre-internet age.
The Cuban government soon got wise to this, however, and rapidly started using extremely high-power jamming equipment to render the useful parts of the radio spectrum unusable. At the time of publication, that jamming was still ongoing, Floridian radio amateurs said.
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/07/16/cubans-used-homemade-radios-to-avoid-the-internet-shutdown-now-they-are-being-jammed-too/
