The writer Adriana Normand reported that she is prohibited from leaving Cuba (officially referred to as being "regulated") due to a supposed "public interest" arbitrarily determined by the Island's authorities.
Normand reported the issue through social media after visiting an office of the Ministry of the Interior, which handles passport issuance.
"Today, at an office responsible for issuing passports, I was denied the procedure to obtain one. I am regulated by public interest," she wrote on her Facebook profile.
In recent years, the category of "regulated" has been frequently used to prevent activists and journalists critical of the Cuban government from leaving Cuba, with the goal of hindering their ability to share their perspective on political and civil life on the island abroad.
Several cases have been reported in which Cuban immigration authorities deny individuals the right to leave the country without providing any convincing explanation for that decision.
In Normand's case, the prohibition was prompted by the public resignation he had to make last October from his contributions to independent Cuban media, specifically elTOQUE and Rialta.
Amid threats, seizures, and extortion, State Security has intensified its harassment with the aim of dismantling initiatives critical of the regime, employing tactics of psychological torture and coercion to elicit resignations and obtain "confessions" against its targets.
In this offensive, collaborators from media outlets like elTOQUE, CubaNet, and Periodismo de Barrio have been summoned, interrogated, and coerced to resign from their work, under the accusation of "mercenarism," a legal term frequently used by the Cuban regime to criminalize the work of independent journalists.
This crime, as stipulated in Article 143 of the Cuban Penal Code, prescribes penalties ranging from four to ten years in prison for those who receive external funds for alleged "subversive" purposes.
However, the reality behind these accusations is the government's ongoing strategy to control the flow of information and suppress any dissenting voices against the official narrative.
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