The activist group 'Fuera de la Caja Cuba' denounced this Saturday that the mass pardon announced by the regime of Miguel Díaz-Canel is a propaganda maneuver that benefits criminals aligned with the power while keeping more than 1,200 political prisoners incarcerated, including the brothers Jorge and Nadir Martín Perdomo.
The Cuban government announced the pardon —which affects more than 2,010 inmates— as a humanitarian and sovereign gesture in celebration of Holy Week. However, the decree explicitly excludes those who committed "crimes against authority," a category that the regime systematically uses to imprison protesters and dissenters.
Organizations such as Prisoners Defenders, OCDH, Cubalex, Human Rights Watch, and Justicia 11J confirmed that no political prisoners were included in this round of releases.
As an example of the selectivity of the pardon, the activist Amanda Beatriz Andrés Navarro pointed to the release of Marisela Alonso Ojeda, former mayor of the municipality of Puerto Padre, in Las Tunas, who was sentenced in March 2025 to seven years in prison for stealing food and fuel intended for the population.
"Recently, over 2,000 prisoners were granted clemency to create an appearance of benevolence, but they took the opportunity to release individuals like Marisela Alonso Ojeda, the former mayor of Puerto Padre, who stole food from her own community and only served one of the seven years she was sentenced to," denounced the collective in a recent video.
Previously, the activist Juan Aldana de la Torriente had also expressed his outrage: "After the mayor was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for serious irregularities related to the misappropriation of community resources, including food and fuel, today she appears among the pardoned".
In contrast, the brothers Jorge Martín Perdomo, 43 years old, a graduate in Mathematics and Computer Science, and Nadir Martín Perdomo, a graduate in Foreign Languages, have been imprisoned since July 17, 2021, when they were detained for peacefully participating in the protests on July 11 in San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque.
Both were sentenced in January 2022 —Jorge to six years and Nadir to eight— for "assault," "contempt," and "public disorder." Their appeal was dismissed by the Provincial Court of Mayabeque in April 2022.
"While criminals sympathetic to the regime continue to benefit, people like Jorge and Nadir Perdomo remain rotting in a jail. Their only crime was walking on July 11 and expressing how they felt. Without vandalism, without violence, just their voices," stated the collective.
Both brothers are family men and have been separated in different prisons. Their mother, Marta Perdomo Benítez, who has faced detentions and surveillance from State Security for defending her sons, published a message on March 11 for Jorge's 43rd birthday: "This regime that does not want anyone to think differently locked them in dungeons".
"Fuera de la Caja Cuba" is a collective of young digital activists composed of Amanda Beatriz Andrés Navarro, Abel Alejandro Andrés Navarro, Mauro Reigos Pérez, and Karel Daniel Hernández Bosques, known for their red caps with the slogan "Make Cuba Great Again."
The group has faced increasing reprisals in 2026: visits from State Security agents to their homes and the disabling of their phones by ETECSA as punishment for supporting the influencer Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente.
Despite the harassment, Amanda Beatriz concluded her statement with a warning: "To the regime, a thief is simply a criminal, but a man with ideas is a governmental threat that must be neutralized, regardless of the cost. These are not isolated cases; they are more than 1,200 families shattered by fear. Justice does not exist when the executioner is the one who dictates the sentence."
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