The US Embassy condemns “the abuse and mistreatment suffered by political prisoners in Cuban regime prisons.”
14ymedio, Madrid, 17 November 2025 — Yosvany Rosell García Caso, who has been on hunger strike for 26 days in the Cuba Sí prison in El Yayal (Holguín), has declared that he will also stop drinking liquids. His wife, Mailin Rodríguez Sánchez, told 14ymedio about this after finding out on Monday.
The situation of the political prisoner, sentenced to 15 years in prison for participating in the peaceful demonstrations on 11 July 2021, “is becoming more critical every day,” says his wife, who says she feels desperate. “They are already transporting him in a wheelchair because he cannot stand,” but despite this, she complains, “he has not been transferred to a hospital.” García Caso suffers from several conditions, including heart disease, hypertension and chronic gastritis.
The daily life of Rodríguez Sánchez and his three children is now even more complicated because they have all contracted chikungunya, one of the arboviruses spreading across the island in epidemic form. “We all have the virus and are recovering. This is terrible,” he says. “Here on my block, we are all laid up.”
“They are already transporting him in a wheelchair because he cannot stand”
Various international bodies have spoken out in favour of the political prisoner in recent weeks. On Monday, the US Embassy in Havana did so via its social media accounts, condemning “the abuse and mistreatment suffered by political prisoners in the Cuban regime’s jails”. It is alarming, says the diplomatic headquarters in X, “that 11 July prisoners such as Yosvany Rosell García are on hunger strike to protest against the constant abuses. We join their demand for the release of all political prisoners”.
García Caso announced in a handwritten letter that he would go on hunger strike from 23 October and demanded to be transferred to a punishment cell as a “new form of protest” against the “continued imprisonment of all political prisoners”. In his letter, the activist expressed his “unequivocal support for maximum pressure from the United States Government on the narco-terrorist Cuban Government”.
He concluded with a postscript: “What you do only for yourself vanishes when you die; what we do for others is our divine legacy.”
Several organizations have also spoken out about the prisoner, including the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, which on Friday issued an alert “regarding the grave risk to his life with each passing minute,” demanding “adequate medical attention and his immediate release.” Cubalex, for its part, noted that hunger strikes are “an extreme measure resorted to by people deprived of their liberty when they are denied effective avenues to report abuses or assert their rights.”
García Caso himself had already staged numerous similar protests to denounce his conviction, which he considers unjust and the result of an arbitrary trial. These hunger strikes—six up to September 11, 2022—are, according to the Justice 11J list of prisoners, what caused the gastritis he suffers from.
Arrested at his home on July 10 for a pot-banging protest, according to the same NGO, García Caso was arrested again for his participation in the July 11 events. Almost a month later, he was transferred to the Holguín Provincial Penitentiary. With alleged prior drug trafficking charges, he was accused of assault, public disorder, spreading epidemics, and incitement to commit crimes, and was initially sentenced to 20 years in prison, and later, on appeal, to 15 years.
Translated by GH