On the line

Just like its old allies in the former German Democratic Republic, the Castro regime has perfected over the years the art of eavesdropping on supposedly private telephone conversations.

Anyone who is deemed to be even vaguely “suspect” by the regime has his or her phone routinely bugged.

No one is immune, either, as Vicente Fox discovered some years back when a supposedly private conversation with Fidel Castro was recorded and then used by the Cubans to publicly embarrass the then Mexican president.

Which brings us to the case of the Damas de Blanco, the small group of (very brave) women that has staged a series of peaceful protests around Havana in the past calling for their dissidents husbands and relatives to be freed.

Their latest protest, a peaceful sit-in on Monday near the Plaza de la Revolucion, was violently broken up by police and Communist Party thugs posing as "ordinary angry patriots".

The women have now accused the Castro regime of spying on them, following the broadcast by the official media of telephone conversations between some of the Damas de Blanco and a US congresswoman.

Of course, this will come as no surprise to anyone who keeps an eye on what goes on in the Castro brothers’ private island.

But I wonder what the Board and shareholders of Telecom Italia think?

After all, the publicly-listed Italian telecommunications giant currently owns about 30 per cent of Etecsa, the Cuban national telephone and telecommunications monopoly.

And Etecsa obviously approved and supported the bugging operation against the Damas de Blanco, as it obviously supports the tapping of probably hundreds of thousands of telephones across the island.

You may want to pose the question directly to the chief executive officer of Telecom Italian, Franco Bernabe …