Cuba and Venezuela: another Christmas with thousands of political prisoners

Christmas arrives again in Cuba and Venezuela with a dark reminder of the repression that persists in both nations. More than a thousand political prisoners in Cuba and nearly 2,000 in Venezuela will spend the holidays behind bars, a symbol of the repressive strategies of the regimes of Miguel Diaz-Canel and Nicolas Maduro. Human rights organizations have intensified their calls to the international community to not ignore this reality, demanding the immediate release of the detainees and the cessation of systematic violations of fundamental rights.

Cuba: The struggle for the freedom of prisoners

A recent report by the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights underscores the gravity of the situation on the island, where more than 1,000 political prisoners will face another Christmas in prison. Among them are the elderly, people with serious health problems and citizens whose only "crime" has been to peacefully express their discontent. The NGO insists that this reality cannot be ignored by the international democratic community.

Among the most emblematic cases is that of José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), who has been imprisoned for more than 124 days in conditions that activists such as Manuel Cuesta Morúa describe as illegal. The regime has evaded fundamental legal processes, such as habeas corpus, to prolong his arbitrary detention.

Other cases reflect the extent of the repression. Misael Espinosa Puebla was accused of "attempt" after a confrontation with police who harassed him for his work as a street vendor. For his part, Nelson Caballero Díaz, arrested for protesting against blackouts in his community, remains on a hunger strike in the Cerámica Roja prison, denouncing his imprisonment as an untenable injustice.

Women are also targets of these repressive policies. Members of the Ladies in White, such as Saylí Navarro and Sissi Abascal, face constant threats from State Security, which seeks to extend their sentences by fabricating new charges against them.

Venezuela: The country with the most political prisoners in the hemisphere

In Venezuela, the human rights panorama is equally bleak with 1,877 political prisoners counted as of December 16, which positions the country as the regional leader in dissident detentions. This figure evidences the hardening of the repressive policies of Nicolás Maduro's authoritarian regime, which uses a combination of traditional tactics and new strategies of social control to dismantle the opposition. Most of the detainees are men, although 235 women, 162 military personnel and six teenagers are also registered. Of the total, 41 remain imprisoned, 146 have been convicted and 1,731 have not received sentences, while the whereabouts of 27 people remain unknown.

Since 2014, 18,096 detentions for political purposes have been documented. Although more than 14,000 people have been released from prison with the support of the Penal Forum, more than 9,000 remain under arbitrary restrictive measures of liberty, reflecting the extent of systematic repression. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has classified this situation as "State terrorism", underlining the widespread and systematic nature of these actions.