Cuban regime diplomats staged a repudiation act this Monday at the United Nations headquarters in New York against activists participating in the event "Cuba Libre: The oppression that Havana hides", organized by the Permanent Mission of the United States to the UN.
José Daniel Ferrer, founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and former political prisoner, immediately reported it on his Facebook account: "The Cuban communists just staged a repudiation act at the @UN."
According to Ferrer, the Cuban diplomats shouted "terrorists" and "out of the UN" at the panelists while the event was taking place, which was broadcast live on UN Web TV for nearly two hours.
The panel addressed the situation of political prisoners in Cuba, the alleged trafficking of Cuban medical professionals, and the corruption within the regime.
Alongside Ferrer were the artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who was released after five years in prison and was forced to leave Cuba in July 2026, and Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, co-founder of the Cuban Democratic Directory and a regular figure in international human rights forums.
The acts of repudiation are a repressive practice characteristic of the regime: mobs organized by the State that insult, threaten, and assault dissidents and activists within Cuba. Monday's episode represents an export of that tactic to the most visible multilateral stage in the world.
The event was held at a time of maximum diplomatic tension. The permanent representative of Cuba to the UN, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, had tried to prevent its occurrence days earlier, describing it as a "political motivation maneuver, organized in a questionable manner, with the clear purpose of attacking Cuba."
Soberón argued that the act violated the UN administrative instruction ST/AI/2019/4, which requires that events in its facilities be consistent with the purposes of the Charter. "The United Nations is not a platform for political persecution, interference in the internal affairs of States, or campaigns aimed at undermining their sovereignty," he stated.
The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, responded that the event brought together former political prisoners and experts on forced labor and corruption, and defended Secretary of State Marco Rubio's approach to Cuba as "perfectly healthy."
The Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla had accused Rubio of "pressuring and blackmailing" world leaders to change their votes in the annual General Assembly vote on the U.S. embargo against Cuba, scheduled for October 27 and 28.
International support for that resolution has steadily declined: 187 votes in 2024, 165 in October 2025, and just 136 in the extraordinary session of July 2026, the lowest level in over a decade.
More than 554 Cuban activists and organizations, including Ferrer and Gutiérrez Boronat, published a letter urging democratic governments to vote against or abstain on October 28, arguing that supporting the resolution benefits the regime and not the Cuban people. The initiative has garnered over 1,000 total endorsements.
The Under Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Juan Pablo Segura, warned that supporting the Cuban resolution “delays the urgent need for political and economic reforms” on the island.
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