Five activists receive sentences of up to seven years in prison for protesting in Cuba.

Five Cuban activists were sentenced to up to seven years in prison for demonstrating on the island in February 2023, as reported by the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Prisoners Defenders.

In a Facebook post, the NGO denounces the actions of the Cuban regime to imprison those who oppose its policies.

In this case, the accused were sanctioned under an alleged offense of propaganda against the constitutional order, in a trial held on June 20th at the Provincial Court of Havana.

Their names are: William Cepero García and Jesús Alfredo Pérez Rivas, sentenced to five years in prison; Josiel Guía Piloto and Lázaro Romero Piloto, to seven years, while Alain Yosvani Cruz Suescum was sentenced to five years of correctional work without imprisonment.

The incident for which these activists were sentenced occurred in February 2023, when Cuban political prisoner Josiel Guia Piloto sewed his mouth shut in protest against the police harassment he was experiencing, being surrounded in his home and threatened by State Security repressors.

His uncle, Lázaro Romero Piloto, was the one who sewed his mouth shut, while William Cepero recorded the action and uploaded it to social media.

Later, the five of them made signs and went out to the street with posters that read "Cuba Failed State", "Díaz-Canel Murderer", and "Homeland and life".

The Cuban court ruling disqualifies these events as planning of a protest with posters containing "anti-constitutional, counterrevolutionary content, with the aim of promoting hatred and repulsion against the socialist government system embodied and approved in the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba".

The five men were arrested and interrogated without the presence of their lawyers the next day.

In the month of May, the Cuban regime added a total of 1,113 political prisoners, according to the latest report from Prisoners Defenders.

"This month has been characterized by repression against peaceful protesters, a large-scale repression operation against independent journalists, torture of prisoners with psychiatric conditions, and the denial of prison benefits to political prisoners entitled to them in Cuba," the NGO said in its document.