This month Miguel Díaz-Canel presided over a ceremony marking 65 years of Cuba’s prison system, which state media called a “fair and humane achievement.” Last week the national grid collapsed for the sixth time this year, and foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez flew to New York to tell the United Nations that Cuba’s suffering is Washington’s fault. Abroad, the regime presents the crisis as a bill for Washington to pay. At home, it jails the Cubans who describe it.The rest of the world has tolerated this grotesque game for far too long.
Andy García was filming neighbors protesting the blackouts in Santa Clara on August 30 when police arrested him for “public disorder.” García had already spent four years as a political prisoner after he participated in the landmark 11J protests of July 11, 2021, which were followed by a massive crackdown and the arbitrary detention of over 1400 people. After a jail time that included a two-week long hunger strike in 2024, García was released in July 2025 and returned to his activism, denounced the officials that tortured and mistreated him in prison and worked to platform protests taking place in the island. He faced continued harassment from security officials and was directly threatened with charges in June, leading up to his detention two months later.
García’s case is just the latest in what has become a pattern of re-arrest of former 11J detainees. The NGO Cubalex has identified the recurrent use of judicial actions to pressure and persecute activists who are under parole or who have previously been condemned under politically motivated charges. Their report estimates at least 28 former political prisoners who have been targeted, but stress that the number is an undercount.
Another victim of the ongoing crackdown is Yoan De La Cruz, who became renowned after he was the first one to share the images of the 11J protests as they were developing. De La Cruz was detained in May and is accused of foreign currency trafficking linked to an alleged act of sabotage, and has spent months in detention under inhumane conditions. In July, renowned artist and pro-democracy activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was released after serving a five year sentence for his participation in the 11J protests, and was forced into exile in the United States.
Activists remain under constant harassment and surveillance by the regime. August recorded a new peak of repressive actions, which included arbitrary detentions, sieging of activists’ homes, overt threats and fines, leading to a new record number of prisoners of conscience at 1339 cases, as recorded by the NGO Prisoner Defenders.
These systematic violations are happening after the regime attempted to put on a conciliatory facade during the first half of the year. In March, the regime announced the release of 51 prisoners after a deal with the Vatican in the lead up to Easter. The following month, it also announced a “humanitarian gesture” which included the release of 2000 people, but it focused mostly on minors, women and elderly detainees, and no concessions for political dissidents.
Washington’s policies towards Havana have gotten harsher under the current administration, and they land on an economy and a society already wrecked by decades of dismal mismanagement and repression by the Communist Party. Democratic governments can hold both facts at once, and should be clear-eyed about who is the oppressor of the Cuban people
On September 26, Bruno Rodríguez used the UN General Assembly podium to denounce U.S. policy toward Cuba, as he does every September. The rhetoric was hotter than usual, and so was the silence: not a word about the regime’s own responsibility for the blackouts, shortages, and exodus hollowing out the island. In late October, Havana will again bring its resolution condemning the U.S. embargo, and Washington’s increasingly tough policies, to the General Assembly. It will pass, as it has every year since 1992, and Havana will present the result as a verdict in its favor.
The vote has no binding power, but that doesn’t stop governments from issuing statements alongside it. Last year Denmark, speaking for 19 EU member states, argued that engagement through the EU-Cuba cooperation agreement was the better path to human rights in Cuba. Australia and New Zealand called for the release of all political prisoners and those arbitrarily detained. Not one of those statements contained a number or a name.
This year they should. And the governments that actually send Cuba money should go further. Brussels approved at least 16 million euros in aid this year, and Madrid has written off billions in Cuban debt. They can condition what they control on the release of all 1,339 political prisoners, no parole conditions, no forced exile, no re-arrests.
The grid will fail again before that vote. When it does, Cubans will come out to bang pots, and some of them will film it, and some of those will be arrested. Some of them after having already spent years in the island’s famously “humane prisons.”
Havana will spend the next five weeks asking the world to pity Cuba. The world should answer with 1,339 names.
