Four Cubans recount their experience trapped at the border between Lithuania and Belarus

What began as a desperate escape following the protests of July 11, 2021, in Cuba turned into a nightmare in the heart of Europe for several Cuban migrants.

Four of them — Sonia Hernández, Carlos Cruz, Yarisledy Rodríguez, and another woman who requested anonymity — spent two weeks trapped between Lithuania and Belarus in the spring of 2022, pushed back and forth by border guards, lacking sufficient food, enduring extreme temperatures, and exposed to mistreatment.

"I was so exhausted that I started hitting myself. They laughed," recalled one of the witnesses in the case, which is currently awaiting a key decision from the European Court of Human Rights, according to Le Monde.

They all have something in common: they left Cuba after the social unrest on July 11th, marked by protests against shortages and government management. In the case of Yarisledy, then a young dancer from Ciego de Ávila, the fear was immediate. She saw how friends were imprisoned, one of whom was sentenced to four years. She decided to leave before facing the same fate.

But the route to Europe did not offer them immediate refuge. According to their accounts, they crossed several times from Belarus to Lithuania between March and April 2022, unsuccessfully seeking asylum. Instead of protection, they were repeatedly turned back, even at gunpoint, ending up stranded in a forest, not knowing where to go.

The case, known as COCG and others v. Lithuania, could set a precedent in Europe regarding these practices of "hot returns," which have been condemned by human rights organizations. In 2022 alone, Lithuania recorded more than 11,000 similar expulsions at that border, amid geopolitical tensions with Belarus and Russia.

Finally, on April 13 of that year, the Cubans managed to enter Lithuanian territory, where they were arrested and later granted asylum. Today, some are trying to rebuild their lives far from the island they left behind, but with scars that are hard to erase.

The story is not isolated. In November 2025, two Cubans were found severely beaten at the border between Latvia and Belarus. According to their testimonies, they were assaulted by border agents before being expelled. Both ended up hospitalized with hypothermia, bruises, and, in one case, a skull fracture.

These episodes reveal an increasingly visible reality: Cubans who, after fleeing repression or a lack of opportunities, find themselves trapped in dangerous migration routes, where the promise of safety evaporates amid violence, uncertainty, and abandonment.

While Europe debates in courts the scope of its migration policies, for many of these migrants, justice arrives too late, after they have lost almost everything along the way.