The Cuban regime deploys vehicles and personnel from ETECSA to the locations where protests occur in order to cut mobile phone and internet signals, preventing demonstrators from filming the repression or broadcasting live images. This was reported by Alain Espinosa, a lawyer for the Cuban human rights organization Cubalex, in recent statements that are part of a report submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
According to Espinosa, the maneuver has a dual purpose: to prevent images of the repression from circulating in real-time and to neutralize the so-called "contagion effect" that turned the protests of July 11, 2021 into a massive phenomenon. "They have ETECSA agents or vehicles that move to the protest site, inhibiting the signal so that there are no recordings or live information coming out while they are repressing," the lawyer stated.
Espinosa emphasized in an interview with Tania Costa on CiberCuba that the massive nature of the protests on July 11 was precisely because information circulated simultaneously throughout the country. "That was the real catalyst for the protests on July 11: when information flowed evenly across the nation, people gradually and spontaneously joined in." He stated that now the regime has integrated signal inhibition as a deliberate evolution of its repressive framework. "What they have done with this new evolution of their repressive apparatus is precisely eliminate that possibility."
This tactic is framed within the report that Cubalex presented to the IACHR on August 4, which documents 215 verifiable actions of militarization between February and July 24, 2026. The recorded events increased from ten in February to 54 in June, and the organization identifies the period from May to July as the highest level on its own scale, equivalent to the complete replacement of civil order by military logic.
The internet outages during protests in Cuba have documented precedents on multiple occasions throughout 2026. In May, a massive outage occurred in Havana coinciding with demonstrations over the energy crisis, and in June, interruptions were reported in Centro Habana and Regla during protests against blackouts.
In the same fragment, Espinosa addressed the strategy of the "exemplary effect." The regime does not target well-known leaders of activism, but rather anonymous individuals who participate in protests—neighborhood residents banging pots and pans—to send a deterrent message to the rest of the population. "The State Security, the Cuban government, as we say in good Cuban, does not miss its target. Its goal in this case is to achieve that much-desired exemplary effect," he noted.
The lawyer also issued a direct warning to the families of detainees who remain silent, believing that doing so will reduce the sentences of their loved ones. Tania Costa specifically mentioned neighbors from the Bahía neighborhood in Havana del Este, imprisoned for their protests with pots and pans, whose families refuse to publicly disclose their names out of fear. "They are afraid; they believe that if they don't say the name, if they don't talk about that young man, the punishment will be less, and he will be released. They are being deceived," she described the situation.
Espinosa was unequivocal on the matter: "Of course they are being deceived, and this is something that we at Cubalex have emphasized a great deal." He explained that State Security first resorts to indirect pressures on family members before resorting to direct threats, always aiming for a deterrent effect on the whole population.
The context in which these complaints arise is the most severe since July 11: Cuba reached a historic record of 1,327 political prisoners as of July 31, 2026, according to Prisoners Defenders, while Cubalex recorded nearly two thousand repressive actions in the first half of the year.
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