The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) has documented 3,051 repressive actions in Cuba between January and September 2026, after recording 344 state abuses during the month of September, according to the monthly report published by the independent organization based in Madrid on Tuesday.
The data indicates that the Cuban regime is on track to exceed the total of 3,179 repressive actions that the OCDH documented throughout 2025, with three months still remaining to be accounted for.
Of the 344 actions recorded in September, 17 were related to arbitrary detentions and 327 to other forms of systematic harassment.
The victims were 189 men and 155 women, distributed across several provinces of the country.
The most violent months of the year were August, with 402 actions, and April, with 395, while September becomes the third highest peak of 2026.
In the first half of the year, there had already been almost two thousand repressive actions, including 257 arbitrary detentions and 488 illegal house detentions.
Yaxys Cires, director of Strategies at OCDH, was categorical in assessing the month: "It has been a disastrous month for freedom of expression and independent journalism. The regime, amid its unpopularity, seeks to impose the law of silence and unfortunately, we believe it could get worse."
Cires also noted that the official stance of not negotiating internal political matters is aimed at preserving the legal mechanisms that enable the persecution of citizens.
The most used tactic in September was the home siege, with 151 documented cases. The operations were concentrated on dates of religious significance to prevent members of the Damas de Blanco from attending Sunday masses.
The activists Berta Soler, Ángel Moya, and María Cristina Labrada were under police surveillance on all four Sundays of the month, including the celebrations of the Virgin of Regla, the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, and the Virgin of Mercedes.
On September 18, repression intensified to prevent dissidents from attending the "American Nights" event at the U.S. Embassy in Havana.
Agentes de seguridad retuvieron en sus hogares a los periodistas Yoani Sánchez, Reinaldo Escobar y Camila Acosta, así como al activista Óscar Elías Biscet.
Among the most serious individual cases of the month is that of journalist Henry Constantin, director of La Hora de Cuba, detained in Camagüey on September 16 after responding to a police summons.
Days later, he was placed in preventive detention and transferred to the Kilo 7 maximum security prison, without prior notification to his family. The Inter-American Press Society, Reporters Without Borders, and the government of the United States demanded his release.
The intellectual Alina Bárbara López Hernández was also arrested while attempting to peacefully protest in Matanzas to demand the release of political prisoners; this marked her fifth arrest so far this year.
In the judicial sphere, the Provincial People's Court of Las Tunas sentenced eight members of the Cuba Primero movement to prison terms ranging from seven to eight years for "propaganda against the constitutional order." Meanwhile, content creator Eduardo Ceballos Pérez from the Despingovery channel has spent 100 days in pretrial detention at Combinado del Este, accused of espionage.
At the beginning of October, a man was arrested in front of the Capitol in Havana after displaying signs that read "Down with the dictatorship" and "No more absurd political discrimination," illustrating that repression did not cease with the closing of September.
The OCDH warns that its figures reflect an underregistration of reality, as restrictions on access to information in Cuba hinder the documentation of all cases. Between 2021 and 2025, the organization recorded over 26,200 repressive actions on the island.
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