The Cuban actress and influencer Angela Lemus posted a video on Instagram that starkly showcases the intimidation tactics of the Cuban State Security: threats to family members, denial of constitutional rights, and a clear ultimatum: You leave the country. Or we’ll imprison you, you choose.
The video, one minute and fourteen seconds long, is described by Lemus as "the reality of many in Cuba" and contains the transcription of what appears to be an interrogation by regime agents of a young woman who expressed herself freely on social media.
In the recording, the officer tells the young woman, "Social media has given you a dangerous courage." She replies, "The Constitution states it's freedom of expression." To which the officer responds, "Here, freedoms are not written down. We grant them when we want to, to whom we want to give them. And you are not on that list."
The threats are not limited to the girl being interrogated. The officer also directly targets her mother: "She goes out every day. Same routes, same people. Things happen. For example, an accident. Like what has happened to so many."
When the girl questions that they can't do that and that she has rights, the agent interrupts her with disdain: "Rights? Is that what you think you have?"
The impact of the video was immediately amplified in the comments. Anna Bensi, a 21-year-old Cuban activist who has been subjected to almost identical repression by State Security for weeks, wrote: "Who filmed my interrogation?".
Bensi's question is not rhetorical. Since March 2026, the young woman has been summoned for multiple interrogations at the police station in Alamar, Havana, and charged along with her mother under Article 393 of the Penal Code, which includes sentences ranging from two to five years in prison.
On April 13, counterintelligence agents attempted to recruit Bensi by offering to boost her music career in exchange for ceasing her criticisms of the regime. She rejected the offer and stated: I leave my life in God's hands.
Days earlier, on April 10, Bensi's sister, an American citizen, was threatened before flying to Miami: the agents told her that "Trump will invade Cuba and the first missile will go to your house" and they withheld her passport.
The pattern described in Lemus's video is neither new nor isolated. The "Fuera de la Caja Cuba" group experienced the disabling of their phones for supporting the activist.
Denis Hernández Ramírez, a protester from the 11J demonstrations who was released from prison in January 2025, was re-incarcerated last March due to posts on social media.
The legal framework that supports this repression includes Decree 370, Decree Law 35, and Law 162/2023 on Social Communication, regulations that criminalize critical expression on the internet despite the fact that the Cuban Constitution formally recognizes freedom of expression in its Article 54.
By the end of 2025, according to the Cultural Rights Observatory, 17 young artists remained incarcerated and ten under restrictive regimes for having criticized the regime.
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