Madrid/Prisons are not spared from the health emergency caused by several arboviruses spread throughout the country. Quite the opposite. According to the most recent Prisoners Defenders report (PD), published this Thursday, the epidemics, together with the effects of the recent Hurricane Melissa, have aggravated the situation of Cuban prisoners, who were already suffering torture and overcrowding.
In forced labor centers in Guantánamo, the organization says, cases of dengue, oropouche and chikungunya were reported that have affected “dozens of inmates”, while in the Quivicán prison, in Mayabeque, there are outbreaks of hepatitis and influenza virus. From the Combinado del Sur, in Matanzas, testimonies of cases of chikungunya, dengue “and many other diseases” have also come.
“The situation of the political prisoners “Cuba is going through one of its most critical moments in recent years,” says the organization, based in Madrid. And it denounces: “Cuban prisons continue to be sources of contagion of these infectious diseases due to the lack of medical care, the deterioration of the facilities, the generalized unhealthiness and the absence of fumigation and disinfection processes, which allows the growth of contagion vectors.”
In its October report, the NGO identifies 463 people with “serious medical pathologies”
On the other hand, PD continues, between 2024 and 2025, they have been informed of the death of dozens of common prisoners due to tuberculosis in prisons throughout the country. In its October report, the NGO identifies 463 people with “serious medical pathologies” and 40 with mental health problems, all of them “without adequate medical or psychiatric treatment.”
In total, there are 1,179 prisoners for political reasons on the Island, 11 of them new. Another 17 people were released, indicates Prisoners Defenders, “the majority due to full completion of their sentence.”
In addition, it is highlighted that 35 minors – the minimum criminal age in Cuba is 16 years – are still on the list, of which 29 are serving sentences and six are being criminally prosecuted with “precautionary measures without any judicial protection.” Among them, 15 “have already been convicted of sedition”, with an average sentence of 5 years in prison.
PD warns that 221 people have been sentenced for this crime, in the case of people who participated in peaceful protests, “to an average of ten years of deprivation of liberty each.”
Among the new political prisoners who entered the organization’s list are four Manicaragua protestersVilla Clara, sentenced to up to six years in prison for “public disorders”: Raymond Martínez Colina, Carlos Hurtado Rodríguez, Osvaldo Agüero Gutiérrez and Yoan Pérez Gómez.
PD’s monthly report also mentions José Daniel Ferrer and Luis Robles Elizastigui, the “young man with the banner”, exiled respectively in the United States and Spain. Of the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, the NGO recalls that he was released and exiled on October 13, “after fully serving, since August 24 of this year although he remained in prison months later, a sentence of 4 years and six months in prison imposed for political reasons.” Likewise, he asserts: “His departure from the Island was not voluntary, but rather a forced expatriation carried out by the Cuban regime as a condition imposed to recover his physical freedom.”
Regarding Robles, who arrived in Madrid on the same day with his mother, Yindra Elizastigui, and his seven-year-old son, they reproduced his testimony about Cuban prisons, which he has defined as “extermination centers” where prisoners are mistreated, deprived of food and medical care, and where torture “is something normal and silence, something imposed.”
