The Inter-American Press Society (SIP) approved a report this Sunday during its 82nd General Assembly held in Bogotá, which denounces “persistent patterns and new forms of restriction on freedom of expression” in Cuba, with particular emphasis on the use of police and courts as tools of repression against journalists, content creators, and activists.
The document indicates that these practices have led to "an increase in detentions, summons, interrogations, and legal proceedings, deepening the restrictions on the exercise of freedom of expression and of the press."
The case that the SIP qualifies as of "greater severity" is that of the journalist Henry Constantín, director of La Hora de Cuba and regional vice president for Cuba of the Press Freedom and Information Commission of the same organization.
Constantín was arrested in September in Camagüey and transferred to the Kilo 7 maximum security prison, where he remains in provisional custody. Cuban authorities have charged him with the crime of "disobedience" for arriving late to a summons from State Security, by the time the agents had already left.
The Provincial People's Tribunal of Camagüey did not admit the habeas corpus appeal filed on their behalf. In mid-October, prison officials claimed to have found a knife among their belongings during a search—an allegation that Constantín denied and attributed to a setup—resulting in their transfer to a punishment cell and the suspension of visits and phone calls. Both Reporters Without Borders and the U.S. Department of State called for their immediate release in late September.
The report also documents the case of Kamil Zayas and Ernesto Ricardo Medina, founders of the audiovisual project El4tico (El Cuartico), who have been imprisoned since February for satirical videos and political analysis.
The Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Holguín requested 10 years in prison for Zayas and eight for Medina, accused of "propaganda against the constitutional order," "defamation of institutions and organizations and of heroes and martyrs," and "incitement to commit crimes" in a context that the SIP describes as the "criminalization" of opinion spaces on social media.
The organization also calls upon the content creator Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente —known as Anna Bensi— aged 21, and her mother, Caridad Silvente, sentenced on October 1 to two years of "liberty limitation" for recording and disseminating a video of a junior officer from the Ministry of the Interior who came to their home to deliver a citation.
The report also mentions journalists Jorge Bello and José Gabriel Barrenechea, who were imprisoned for participating in protests, and Mayelín Rodríguez Prado, sentenced to 15 years in prison for "sedition" and "enemy propaganda" after posting videos of the protests in Nuevitas (Camagüey) on Facebook in 2022.
Among the structural restrictions, the SIP emphasizes the Decree 160, in effect since August 2026, which closes the possibility for independent media to formalize as private economic activities and keeps journalism, news agencies, broadcasting, and certain editorial and information activities under state control.
The organization also denounces the classification of "regulated"—journalists prohibited from leaving the country—calling it an "additional mechanism of pressure and control," alongside internet cuts, paper shortages, and verbal summonses that "often serve as a precursor to arrests and criminal proceedings."
This situation is framed within a 129% increase in the repression against independent journalists in September compared to August, according to the Cuban Observatory of Freedom of Expression, which recorded 39 violations of press freedom in September compared to 17 in August.
The SIP, founded in 1943 and based in Miami, brings together more than 1,300 media outlets from the Western Hemisphere.
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