Sissi Abascal, the youngest Lady in White from Cuba, shared a personal account of her forced departure from the island. The Cuban authorities, after releasing her, did not take her home but instead directly to the airport, heading towards an exile with no return.
"I left my house one ordinary day, not imagining that that morning I would forever leave behind the place where I built my life," wrote the 27-year-old activist in the post she shared on Facebook this Tuesday.
Abascal was arrested in November 2021 in the Carlos Rojas Popular Council, in the municipality of Jovellanos, Matanzas, for her participation in the protests of July 11, the largest popular demonstrations in Cuba in decades.
The Municipal Court of Jovellanos sentenced her to six years in prison for contempt, assault, and public disorder, and she began serving her sentence at the women’s prison La Bellotex in Matanzas.
"It was more than four years in prison. Over fourteen hundred days of darkness, uncertainty, and an unjust confinement aimed at silencing my voice," he/she recounted in his/her post.
In August 2025, she underwent emergency surgery for bartolinitis without the authorities notifying her family. In June of that same year, the regime had formally denied her parole.
Her release, in May 2026, was facilitated by the Legal Rescue Foundation through a humanitarian visa from the United States Department of State, although the regime imposed the condition that her mother, Annia Zamora —also a Lady in White— leave Cuba first.
"People told me that the first one who had to leave Cuba had to be my mom. They said if my mom didn't leave, they wouldn't let me go," declared Abascal upon arriving in Miami on May 14, 2026.
The organization Cubalex described that departure as “conditional freedom through exile”: the regime preferred to expel her from the country rather than acknowledge her innocence or grant her prison benefits within Cuba.
In his post on Tuesday, Abascal starkly described what that moment meant: "The day the sentence ended, there was no return home. I was taken directly to the airport, condemned to a forced exile and with no right to ever return to the land that saw me born."
The only presence that eased that transition was that of her family, who also departed with her.
"I couldn't say goodbye to my neighbors, take one last stroll through my streets, or embrace so many who were left behind," he/she wrote.
His father, Armando Abascal, chose to stay on the island with another son.
From exile, the activist continues to demand freedom for those who remain imprisoned.
"I carry in my chest the stifled cry of a people yearning to breathe without fear and the firm and unwavering demand for freedom for each of the political prisoners who still suffer in those cells," she wrote in the post.
Abascal's account comes at a time when Cuba reports 1,339 political prisoners, a new historical record according to a report by Prisoners Defenders published at the beginning of this month.
"Although I have been torn from my homeland, my faith remains unshaken: I dream and continue to wait for the day when my country will finally be free," Abascal concluded his message.
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