Cubans use newspaper to ask U.S. to censor media

HAVANA – The Cuban government used their main newspaper to release a list of demands ahead of President Barack Obama's visit to the island this month.

The Cuban government came out firing in an editorial that was published Wednesday morning in the government-run newspaper, Granma.  

Ahead of Obama's March 20th trip to Havana, the editorial released a portion of Cuban President Raul Castro's statement prepared for the historic visit. Castro will say that Cuba will defend its sovereignty and will not "surmount to pressure over our internal affairs," the editorial said. 

While ignoring the U.S. laws that protect freedom of the press, the Cuban government used their newspaper to ask that the U.S. government put a stop to the politically-motivated "aggressions" on radio and television. In Cuba, the government controls all Internet and communications services. 

The editorial did not specify if the request was limited to alleged U.S. government-funded opposition programs. In 2014, an Associated Press investigation uncovered that the U.S. Agency for International Development funded contractor Creative Associates International's ZunZuneo program, a mobile-phone app known as the "Cuban Twitter."  

Granma's anonymous authors attributed the U.S. diplomatic effort to normalize relations to the "heroic resistance" of the Cuban people and their "loyalty to their principles." And also to the Caribbean and Latin American nations that "placed the U.S. in a situation of isolation that they could no longer sustain." 

The editorial did not list the countries or specify how the Caribbean and Latin American nations managed to isolate the U.S. 

Their other demands: The U..S. Congress needs to lift the economic blockade, the U.S. military must return Guantanamo territory and U.S. financiers' efforts to "fabricate an internal political opposition" must stop.

In addition, the immigration policy giving Cuban doctors political asylum and the "wet-foot dry-foot" immigration policy must also end, they said. 

Local 10 News is sending a team of reporters to Havana for Obama's visit led by anchor Calvin Hughes. Be on the lookout for our team coverage later this month.