This is what “reform” looks like in socialist Cuba. This is the “change” so many are touting. This is socialism in action.

Nora Gamez Torres reports in The Miami Herald:

Latest wave of repression in Cuba targets journalists, artists and video gamers

These days it is not necessary to be a dissident to be arrested in Cuba. Just using a Cuban flag or playing on an intranet with your friends can get you in trouble with the authorities.

Users of SNET, a wireless network created on the island by video-game enthusiasts, have complained on social networks how the state security apparatus has threatened them to silence their protests after the government made their network illegal through a new decree that authorizes only private networks smaller than SNET.

”Yesterday [Aug. 15] at 11:45 pm state security came to my house,” Ernesto de Armas, one of the members of SNET, posted on Twitter. “They took me in a patrol car. They threatened me, falsely accused me of things, even threatened me with jail. I am very sad that this happens just to defend SNET in my country. I don’t hurt anyone.”

The members of the network themselves had created strict rules to ban political or pornographic material, which would have attracted the attention of the authorities, but still, the government decided to outlaw SNET.

After the state security warning, Armas said he was leaving the network for fear of reprisals against his family. He also communicated on social networks that he would not participate in a protest called by the organizers for Aug. 17 in front of the Ministry of Communications. The protest never took place, after threats from state security to several members of the network.

Police officers also prevented independent journalists from covering the protest.

“The calls began last night,” Abraham Jiménez Enoa, editor of the magazine El Estornudo, said on Twitter. “They followed very early today. Half an hour ago I was going to try to leave home and two State Security agents prevented me. They say I can’t leave my home today. That if I do they will take me to jail. They are still out there.”

In recent months, repression has targeted independent journalists who collaborate with non-state media or media abroad, as part of a broader repressive wave that has also included artists and academics and that in many cases has been based on new regulations or recently approved decrees.

“The most dramatic repression has been felt since the beginning of this year,” said Maykel González Vivero, director of the Tremenda Nota independent site, who is visiting the United States. “With the expansion of the internet, there are more and more symptoms of empowerment in civil society. The political police, government officials and bureaucrats of the Communist Party have come to feel that the situation is getting out of hand.

”The repression has to do with a position of weakness,” he added.