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Amnesty International documented in its annual report on the state of human rights worldwide—published this month and assessing events from 2025 in 144 countries—a systematic and intensified repression by the Cuban regime against activists, opponents, journalists, and human rights defenders.
The document, which dedicates a specific chapter to Cuba, reports that the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights recorded at least 3,179 repressive actions and 529 arbitrary detentions during 2025, while the organization Prisoners Defenders counted 1,197 political prisoners at the end of the year.
One of the most emblematic cases was that of opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer García, whose parole—obtained in January 2025 after mediation from the Vatican—was revoked in April as retaliation for his continued activism.
In a handwritten letter from September 2025, Ferrer wrote: "I am ready to die, but not to live without honor, without dignity." Finally, in October he was forced into exile in the United States after denouncing months of torture and threats against his family.
The same pattern of revocation of parole affected the other prisoners of conscience Félix Navarro and Donaida Pérez Paseiro, who were released in January and again subjected to restrictions in April.
The leader of the Damas de Blanco, Berta Soler, was arbitrarily detained multiple times throughout the year.
The activist Leonardo Romero Negrín was arrested in March for peacefully protesting with a blank sign, beaten, and placed under house arrest.
The writer Jorge Fernández was detained and beaten several times for peacefully protesting, and in August, he was also placed under house arrest.
In November, the regime launched a campaign of harassment and criminalization against the independent media elTOQUE and 18 of its collaborators, with threats of imprisonment on charges of "financial terrorism" and the public disclosure of personal data of journalists and their families.
In prisons, the organization Cubalex documented 39 deaths of incarcerated individuals during 2025.
The political prisoners Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Maykel Castillo, Loreto Hernández, Roberto Pérez Fonseca, and Sayli Navarro reported torture, beatings, denial of family visits, and lack of medical attention.
The report also notes that women activists face different forms of repression: threats against their children, surveillance in schools, and stigmatization.
The Gender Observatory Alas Tensas documented 48 cases of femicide in 2025, a crime that the Cuban state still does not classify independently.
The economic crisis worsens the situation: the Food Monitor Program indicated in May 2025 that 96.91% of the population had lost access to food due to inflation, and more than 60% spent between five and 15 hours a week trying to obtain food.
The authorities themselves acknowledged in July that they only had 30% of essential medications, while the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimated in September that 89% of the population lived in extreme poverty.
In September, 15 people were sentenced to up to nine years in prison for participating in the Bayamo protests of March 2024, demonstrating the systematic use of criminal charges such as "public disorder," "contempt," and "assault" to criminalize peaceful protest.
Amnesty International warned that its report "goes beyond a mere warning of an imminent collapse: it documents one that is already underway," and demanded that states reject appeasement towards regimes that systematically violate human rights, in a condemnation that human rights organizations have supported for years against the Cuban dictatorship.
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