HAVANA – Cuba’s official media criticized software giant Microsoft on Friday for denying Cuban Internet users access to its Windows Live Messenger service, calling the move “another turn of the screw in the technological blockade of the island.”

“The most paradoxical thing is that the measure is taken precisely by a company like Microsoft, which on launching the Messenger service a decade ago proclaimed to the four winds that this would be dedicated to promoting ‘free’ exchange among people, without distinction of race, creed, political beliefs or any other discriminatory element,” Juventud Rebelde newspaper said.

Microsoft said last week that it was discontinuing WLM service for users in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea in order to comply with U.S. trade embargoes against those nations.

“Why does Microsoft take this step right now? Not even the company spokespeople have given an effective reply to that, despite the fact that Messenger is active since 1999, and thus from its start until last week was ‘violating’ the embargo,” the Cuban newspaper said.

Cubans cannot connect to the Internet from their homes, a situation the government blames on technical limitations arising from the 47-year-old U.S. economic embargo, yet the communist regime also blocks numerous Web sites for political reasons.

Less than 1 percent of Cuba’s 11.2 million people have Internet access, according to unofficial figures, and of that group the majority can only use services and sites hosted by domestic servers.

Cuba currently has around 600 computer clubs where some 100,000 members study and have access to the government-controlled Intranet.

The International Telecommunications Union says Cuba has the lowest Internet usage in Latin America.

President Raul Castro, who formally succeeded ailing older brother Fidel in February 2008, has scrapped regulations banning private citizens from owning computers, cell phones and other consumer goods, but officials say that expanding Internet access will take time.

Blogs, e-commerce and Web-based debates are growing phenomena in Cuba even if such activity takes place on the sly due to the communist regime’s official restrictions on Internet access.

The blog culture has been spurred along in a brief period of time by a small group of students, computer technicians, artists, journalists and dissidents, who run Web sites that serve as alternative forums for discussion on topics ranging from politics to poetry. EFE