The Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) is a non-violent opposition organization in Cuba that brings together Cuban dissidents. It was founded on August 24, 2011 by José Daniel Ferrer García after he was released from prison in March 2011 and refused to leave the country.
Although it was founded by twelve people, UNPACU now has over ten thousand affiliated activists and 122 cells. By 2017, they estimated that 53 of their activists were imprisoned in Cuba for political reasons.
UNPACU is represented both in the United States and in the European Union
On the organization's website, it can be read: "The activism of UNPACU is based on non-violent resistance and disobedience, the same principle that underpinned the so-called 'color revolutions,' whose courses of action were once articulated by Gene Sharp."
Recognized by Amnesty International since its inception, this movement has denounced the harassment, intimidation, and detentions that its members have suffered at the hands of the Cuban authorities.
As part of its growth and consolidation, UNPACU absorbed the peaceful dissident organization FANTU in 2013, led by the renowned dissident journalist Guillermo Fariñas.
Among its objectives, the organization actively denounces the lack of civil liberties as well as the precarious economic situation prevailing on the island.
In January 2012, one of its members, the Cuban dissident Wilman Villar Mendoza who was 31 years old, died at the Juan Bruno Zayas hospital in Santiago de Cuba after a hunger strike lasting 50 days that he had initiated in prison after being sentenced to four years in jail for participating in a peaceful demonstration.
