The island ranks fourth on the United Nations list of enforced disappearances and first in arbitrary detentions.
14ymedio/EFE, Madrid, November 18, 2025 — The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) considers that 49 protesters who participated in the anti-government protests of 11 July 2021 (’11J’) in Cuba were detained “arbitrarily for political and ideological reasons and without due process or defense.” This is according to a report published Tuesday by Prisoners Defenders (PD), following receipt of the WGAD’s findings.
The organization, based in Madrid, was the one that reported the cases in this instance. The GTDA, which also acknowledged that they suffered other “multiple crimes against humanity,” such as enforced disappearance and isolation, torture, and rape, has called on the Cuban regime to release and exonerate these 49 people “immediately” and compensate them for damages.
The international organization also requested that Havana initiate a “thorough and independent investigation” into the proceedings against these participants in the 11J demonstrations.
Similarly, it considers the crimes the detainees were accused of, including contempt and resistance, to be “vague” figures and deems it a violation of due process that the arrested were tried in military courts.
Neither the detainees nor their families have a copy of the arrest warrants or the pretrial detention orders.
The WGAD accepted Prisoner Defender‘s version of events in its conclusions, stating that neither the detainees nor their families have copies of the arrest warrants or the pretrial detention orders. The group indicated that the Cuban government did not respond to its request to include its position in the report initiated following PD’s complaint.
In this regard, the organization stated in a press release that, by not responding, “the regime (…) tacitly agreed to the arguments and evidence presented by Prisoners Defenders.”
The complaining organization stated, according to the two opinions of the United Nations body, that the arrests were carried out “without a court order” and that many of those detained suffered “long periods of enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention (in some cases, up to 40 days) without access to legal counsel.”
It is precisely with regards to enforced disappearances that Cuba’s ranking in these reports is particularly striking. Since 2012, Prisoners Defenders has filed 193 urgent actions with the UN related to the island, placing the country fourth, behind only Mexico, Iraq, and Colombia. The NGO points out one “essential difference”: “While in those other countries enforced disappearances are perpetrated by organized crime, in Cuba the only organized crime responsible for enforced disappearances is the government itself.”
In this regard, PD cites the case of Daisel González Álvarez, one of those detained after the July 11 attacks, “without judicial oversight” and without “independent legal and technical defense throughout the criminal proceedings, except for the lawyers appointed by the State,” all of which they describe as “especially serious.” He is currently missing, “with no confirmation that he has left the country and no immigration record to support this claim.”
According to news reports published in various media outlets last year, the young man left the island on a boat that departed from Güira de Melena, Artemisa, and disappeared upon reaching Florida. However, Prisoners Defenders asserts that this version “has been refuted by his own family, who indicate that he ultimately abandoned that idea.”
In reality, it concludes, “there is no verifiable information about his whereabouts, and State Security has stopped looking for him and shows no interest in clarifying his situation, a highly worrying indicator.”
With the 49 cases from the July 11 protests examined, the island is already the country with the most arbitrary detentions since 2019, according to the UN, with a total of 93, and “the only one,” says PD, that has been condemned in three opinions involving “more than 10 victims.” Cuba, Turkey, and Nicaragua are, in that order, the only three countries in the world with more mass condemnations of this type.
In its judgement, the GTDA, “with these 49 new cases, places Cuba as the first country in the world for arbitrary detention since 2019, with 93 cases between 2019 and 2025” and “the only one” that has been condemned in three opinions with “more than 10 victims.”
In that regard, PD lamented that in Cuba “prison is a tool of social discipline. Detention and imprisonment are punishments, but also recurring intimidating messages to society.”
In addition to detailing the current situation of all the cases examined, the organization’s report includes the names, surnames and positions of “repressors and agents of the regime” – including defense lawyers in the service of the State – involved in 66 of the cases examined by the GTDA.
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