Cuba

Curbelo Aguilera has stated that he was prosecuted in retaliation for his reporting on anti-government protests in the eastern town of Caimanera in 2023.

Increasing state repression has forced multiple Cuban journalists into exile, a troubling sign for the future of independent media on the island.

Nieves believes that the threatening message came from agents of Cuban state security because he previously received other threatening messages from individuals with the names used by police officers who interrogated him while he was still in Cuba.

“The harassment suffered by López and Pantoja is indicative of the Cuban government’s continued use of its intelligence and police forces to target artists and stifle free expression.”

Bruguera was forced to leave Cuba in 2021 as a result of government pressure and persecution for her artistic work.

Jiménez told CPJ that this was not the first time he has been threatened by individuals with Cuban accents.

In a new report on the second anniversary, PEN International, PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) and Cubalex, profile 17 exiled cultural professionals – demonstrating their resilience – while documenting the repressive and sometimes violent tactics by the Cuban state that forced them to flee.

Freedom House spoke with human rights defender Anamely Ramos González about Cuba’s San Isidro Movement – an art collective that continues to defend Cubans’ right to free expression even after key members were imprisoned.

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemns Cuba’s dictatorial regime for its ploy to “legalize censorship” by approving a law that will allow it to strengthen its coercion against press freedom, independent media, and journalists and further restrict citizens’ freedom of expression.

Article 28 of the new law says media are “the socialist property of the entire people or of political, social and mass organisations, and cannot be the subject of any other kind of property.”

María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez is a Cuban poet and activist. On March 10, 2022, she was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of ‘public disorder,’ ‘assault’, ‘instigation to commit a crime’, ‘contempt,’ and ‘resistance’.

Bestowing this year’s IPFA on Jiménez recognizes that Cuba remains one of the most challenging environments in the Americas for the press.

The report “Prison or Exile: Cuba’s Systematic Repression of July 2021 Demonstrators,” documents a wide range of human rights violations committed in the context of the protests, including arbitrary detention, abuse-ridden prosecutions, and torture.

To mark the one-year anniversary of the J11 protests in Cuba, Freedom House interviews Alessandra Pinna, director of programs for the Latin America and Caribbean region, to discuss what Cubans are doing to secure a freer future and how the international community can help.