Since the purpose of ZunZuneo was to politically destabilize Cuba, Havana reacts

Apr 4, 2014 13:14 GMT  ·  By

As expected, Cuba is not happy at all with the way the United States has been looking to interfere in its politics through the help of the “Cuban Twitter” texting service.

Josefina Vidal, director of US Affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, said that the existence of ZunZuneo indicated that the United States government had not “renounced its plans of subversion against Cuba,” which sought to create situations of destabilization in the country, which would eventually lead to changes in the public order.

On top of this, Vidal has demanded that the United States respect the international laws, as well as the United Nations charter. She also asked the US to put a stop to its illegal and clandestine operations against Cuba.

Yesterday, it was revealed thanks to the Associated Press that the United States government had put together a texting tool that was supposed to help it circumvent the Cuban control over the Internet. The app worked completely offline and was similar to Twitter.

The plan was that when the app became popular enough, political content would start to be released to try to sway the political affiliations of the users and, ultimately, to a regime change in Cuba.

At its peak, the app had over 40,000 users who were never aware that the network was actually created by the US government. The program was discontinued in 2012 without much notice, when the funds ran out.

While the ZunZuneo project was kept a secret, the US government denies it was a covert operation. Instead, the tool was dubbed as “discreet.”

By claiming that the program was not actually secret, the US is saying that the White House did not have to sign a written authorization for it.

Marie Harf, State Department spokeswoman, admitted that the project had a three-year budget of $1.2 million and that it was built by subcontractors and foreign banks. She denies, however, any involvement of the USA in providing political content to the platform.

“We did not supply political content. We did not drive the political content,” she said, admitting that the original general topics discussed on the platform, such as soccer, music and the weather, did come from the US contractors.

“So this is solely for the purpose of creating a platform for Cubans to express themselves, which has long been the policy of the United States, the United States Congress, and many other people in this country,” Harf said.