Amnesty says Cuba’s repression deepens as hundreds remain jailed

A former prisoner said, “Nearly five years in Cuban prison have taught me that the government won’t loosen its hold on power.” That testimony fits a crackdown that has outlasted the street protests that shook Cuba on 11 July 2021 and has continued to shape the lives of families, activists and political detainees across the island.

Thousands of Cubans marched that day over the economy, medicine shortages, the COVID-19 response and restrictions on speech and assembly. Amnesty International said potentially hundreds of protesters were imprisoned afterward, many on charges such as “public disorder.” The arrests turned the post-protest wave into something more durable than a crackdown, a system meant to deter dissent long after the cameras left.

By July 2024, Amnesty said Cuban authorities, facing a humanitarian crisis and increased protest, had continued to refine a “sophisticated machinery of repression.” The organization urged the government to release people jailed for exercising free expression and peaceful assembly. It also named Pedro Albert Sánchez as a prisoner of conscience and had already identified a wider group of detainees and activists, including José Daniel Ferrer García, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Maykel Castillo, also known as Maykel Osorbo, Loreto Hernández García, Donaida Pérez Paseiro, Félix Navarro, Sayli Navarro and Luis Robles.

The most visible test of that pressure came on 14 January 2025, when Cuban authorities said they would release 553 prisoners after talks linked to Pope Francis and the Vatican. On the same day, the U.S. government said it would remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Amnesty later said White House sources expected many of the people to be released to be tied to the 11 July 2021 protests.

But the announcement quickly ran into the same opacity that has defined the crackdown. By 17 February 2025, Amnesty said more than 171 politically detained people had been released, yet hundreds remained in prison. The Cuban government never published a public list of who was included in the release process, leaving families to guess at who might come home and who would stay behind.

The fragility of any apparent thaw became even clearer on 29 April 2025, when Amnesty reported that José Daniel Ferrer and Félix Navarro had been re-imprisoned under unclear and arbitrary conditions after conditional release in January. For Havana, political imprisonment remains a tool of regime survival. For foreign governments and human-rights groups, the January release process showed they can win movement at the margins, but not yet secure lasting leverage over a system built to endure beyond global attention.