Alfaro Fría began a hunger strike on November 2 to protest “the lack of basic rights” in prison.
MIAMI, United States. – The Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States Department of State reported in X that Daniel Alfaro Fría began a hunger strike on November 2 to protest “his unjust sentence” and “the lack of basic rights” in prison.
In the same message, the organization attributed the case to the persecution of dissidents and accused the Miguel Díaz-Canel regime of torturing opponents.
According to the registry of the NGO Prisoners DefendersAlfaro Fría was arrested in March 2024 and received a nine-year sentence. He is in the Guanajay (Artemisa) forced labor prison, convicted of the crimes of “propaganda against the constitutional order” and “illegal meetings or demonstrations”, categories used recurrently by the Cuban penal system against activists and opponents.
The Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and Press (ICLEP) precise that Alfaro Frías was arrested on March 13, 2024 in San Antonio de los Bañoswho was allegedly beaten during the arrest, held incommunicado for several days and later transferred to the Guanajay maximum security prison.
Alfaro Frías would be in a punishment cell “without a mattress” and without “food supplies,” in addition to having his inmate clothing removed during days of low temperatures, according to testimonies collected by Martí News.
The message from the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, although it does not announce concrete measures, seeks to raise the political cost of prison repression by placing an individual case—that of Alfaro Fría—as a symbol of a pattern. Washington’s public denunciation contrasts with the usual secrecy of Cuban institutions regarding the situation of political prisoners and protests inside prisons, where information usually comes from family members, activists and human rights organizations.
