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The official portal Cubadebate published an article to denounce the torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, while the regime it represents holds a historic record of 1,306 political prisoners and accumulates dozens of allegations of torture in its own prisons.
The trigger was the viral photograph of a Palestinian tied to a board and blindfolded. Israel confirmed that the image is authentic but refused to reveal the man's identity or the location of his detention, according to a report from the television station Al Jazeera.
Two mothers claim to recognize their sons in the image: Rana Abu Nasser stated that it is her son Osama, who disappeared along with her one-year-old grandson near the area controlled by the Israeli army, while Joudeh al Ghou asserted that it is her son Amin: "It's him, his hair and his chin. He is my son. A mother's heart recognizes her child. I held the phone and began to cry."
The Israeli forces responded that "the incident of the publication does not align with the values and regulations of the IDF."
The human rights organization B'Tselem accused in August 2024 that Israel has implemented a systematic policy of mistreatment and torture of Palestinian prisoners since October 2023, with acts ranging from arbitrary violence to sexual abuse.
The paradox is hard to overlook, as the very medium that amplifies these complaints belongs to a regime that, according to the organization Prisoners Defenders, has accumulated a historic record of repression by the end of June, with 1,306 verified political prisoners, 40 of whom are minors, 16 of them held in adult prisons.
Since the protests on July 11, 2021, 2,112 people have been arrested for political reasons in Cuba.
This Saturday, the wife of political prisoner Ulises Reyes Ramís denounced extreme conditions in the Mar Verde prison in Santiago de Cuba.
"Two months with a rotten arm from bug bites and there is no medical attention," declared Yanelis Galván Cusa, who added that "the water they are providing is as black as mud" and that the food is limited to "two bananas with a water of unknown origin."
By the end of June, the documented situation in the Canaleta prison, in Ciego de Ávila, was no less grave, with inmates in punishment cells receiving only one bucket of water every 24 hours for drinking, bathing, washing clothes, and sanitizing latrines.
The double standard has recent precedents. In May, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba, condemned the deaths of Cubans in immigration custody in the United States while ignoring the dozens of fatalities in Cuban prisons. The public response was unanimous: "And what about the deaths in Cuban prisons?".
The numbers within the Island are striking. The Cuban Prison Documentation Center recorded at least 24 deaths in custody in the first half of 2025, 45 instances of beatings, 104 cases of denial of medical care, and 11 episodes of psychological torture in at least 43 prisons across the country. In all of 2024, at least 40 inmates died in Cuban prisons.
The pardon signed by the regime last April, when it released 2,010 sanctioned individuals, explicitly excluded those convicted of "crimes against authority," the legal framework used to criminalize the demonstrators from July 11, who continue to serve sentences of up to 25 years.
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