Prison guards at the Provincial Prison of Holguín brutally beat the political prisoner Roilán Álvarez Rensoler, 41 years old, leaving him with fractured arms and head injuries, as reported by his sister to Radio Martí on Friday.
The aggression reportedly occurred as punishment for refusing to wear the correctional facility's mandated uniform, a form of resistance that the activist has systematically maintained since his arrest.
Ariana Álvarez, sister of the political prisoner, explained that she went to the prison on Thursday to obtain information, and it was another inmate from the same unit who told her what happened: "Santiago, they broke his arms, he has wounds on his body, most of the blows were to the head, but they won't let me see him, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing."
The prison authorities are preventing the family from seeing Roilán directly, something that his sister interprets as a sign of the seriousness of his injuries: "I know that the reason they won't let us see him is the condition my brother is in."
According to Ariana's account, the guards attempted to force the uniform onto him and handcuffed him before beating him. The prisoner responded verbally, calling his aggressors "murderers," but did not try to physically attack them: "He didn't try to do anything to them, only to defend himself with his words because he couldn't do anything against all they were doing."
Álvarez Rensoler, a member of the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU) and promoter of the Cuba Decide initiative, was detained on January 30, 2026 in the municipality of Mella, Santiago de Cuba province.
The regime charges him with the crime of propaganda against the constitutional order for carrying out anti-government graffiti in Holguín and for damaging a billboard featuring the image of Fidel Castro in the town of Birán.
Since his arrest, he has maintained a stance of resistance that goes beyond rejecting the uniform: he also refuses the prison food. "He actually only eats every 15 days when we go and bring him food," his sister confirmed.
This protest attitude had already cost him dearly before. After carrying out a hunger strike lasting nearly 49 days, he suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest on March 19, 2026, and had to be resuscitated with a defibrillator at the "Lucía Íñiguez Landín" Hospital in Holguín.
On the same day, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued precautionary measures through Resolution 19/26, demanding that the Cuban state provide guarantees for his life and physical integrity, a resolution that the regime has disregarded.
This week's beating is not the only documented abuse this year. In May, guards from the same prison threatened to execute him if the United States carried out a military intervention in Cuba.
The case of Álvarez Rensoler is part of a pattern of systematic violence against Cuban political prisoners: so far in 2026, other activists from UNPACU have endured similar beatings in various prisons across the country, while Prisoners Defenders recorded 1,281 political prisoners in Cuba by the end of May, a record high.
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