The independent journalist Ernesto Morales shared on Facebook a video that Eddy Ceballos recorded weeks before his arrest, with explicit instructions to make it public if he was detained. Ceballos, the creator of the satirical channel Despingovery Channel, was arrested on the same day in Havana during a large police operation by the Cuban regime.
According to testimonies collected by Morales, the agents intercepted Ceballos near his home, not allowing him to enter his house or notify his wife. "The deployment of motorcycles was enormous," witnesses of the operation stated.
In the video, recorded with full awareness that his arrest was imminent, Ceballos delivers a direct message to those watching: "If you are seeing this video, it unfortunately means that I have been imprisoned, separated from my home, my family, my daughter, once again revealing the true nature of the government of Cuba."
The digital creator denounces in the message that his arrest shows that "there is not the slightest hint of freedom of expression" nor "the slightest respect for any human rights" in the island.
Ceballos also rejects any political justification for his imprisonment: "What is happening to me is a complete injustice, as I have never spoken ill of any political institution, and yet they have sought to silence me through imprisonment."
The immediate trigger for the arrest was the Instagram post showcasing what Ceballos described as his “most militaristic chapter”: the exploration of an abandoned military facility featuring Soviet missiles from the 1960s, radars, and bunkers. In front of the camera, he described one of the artifacts as “an air-to-ground missile from approximately the 1960s, from the Cold War. A monumental thing that I never thought I would be able to touch in my life.”
The content proved politically sensitive at a time when the Cuban National Assembly had declared, on May 27, a "real and dangerous threat of direct military aggression" by the United States.
Despingovery Channel went viral in April 2025 for its parodies in the style of nature documentaries, where Ceballos narrated with a pseudoscientific tone about the potholes, ruins, and deteriorating infrastructure of Cuba. Since April 2026, he also collaborated with the independent media outlet Cubanet.
Cuban authorities have not commented on the detention or provided any information about possible charges against Ceballos.
The detention is part of a growing pattern of repression against digital creators in Cuba. The Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press recorded 69 arbitrary detentions in January 2026, an increase of 430% compared to the same month in 2025. Among the recent cases is that of Luismi Arias, detained in Ciego de Ávila in April 2026, and the creators of El4tico in Holguín, arrested on February 6, 2026, and accused of “propaganda against the constitutional order” with potential sentences of up to nine years.
At the end of his message, Ceballos urged all Cubans, both on and off the island, not to abandon those who are currently facing imprisonment for political reasons: "Do not let them die, do not let them be forgotten, and we have to fight this battle."
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