- Those convicted are protesters from Manicaragua who were protesting the lack of electricity.
- A report claims that 60 people lost their lives in state custody in Cuba in one year.
14ymedio, Madrid, October 24, 2025 / The October 20, 2024 protests in Manicaragua, Villa Clara, over the power outage resulted in severe prison sentences of five and six years for six demonstrators. The sentence was issued just one year after the protest, during which 23 people were arrested. The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) has had access to it and denounces the document’s “Orwellian narrative.”
Those sentenced to six years are José Águila Ruiz, for the crime of propaganda against the constitutional order, and Raymond Martínez Colina and Carlos Hurtado Rodríguez, both for public disorder. Meanwhile, Osvaldo Agüero Gutiérrez, Narbiel Torres López, and Yoan Pérez Gómez all received five-year prison sentences for public disorder.
The Provincial Court of Villa Clara considers that all of them were among the 100 people who marched on the headquarters of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in the town on October 20th, demanding an end to the blackouts. During the event, the ruling indicates, they resorted to “banging pots and other metal objects” that “disrupted public peace” and interrupted traffic while shouting “we want electricity.”
During the event, the sentence indicates, they resorted to “banging on pots and other metal objects” that “disrupted public peace” and interrupted traffic while shouting “we want electricity.”
The text details that “the accused Narbiel honked a type of horn that incited the noise; the accused Raymond wore a metal object around his waist that he banged, and the accused Carlos made similar noises,” while two others complained “with shouts and gestures,” making it difficult, according to the document, to which the OCDH had access, for the authorities to verbally communicate with the citizens to explain the situation. The objective, the court determined, was “to overwhelm the officials.”
José Águila Ruiz, convicted of “propaganda against the constitutional order,” was charged with that crime for having filmed and disseminated the demonstration in real time on social media “with the aim of discrediting the Cuban social system.”
In the protests of those days, which, as the ruling recognizes, dissolved peacefully when the power was restored, 23 people were arrested, with the largest group being those arrested in the neighboring Encrucijada. Among them was independent journalist José Gabriel Barrenechea, for whom a seven-year prison sentence was sought in a trial held at the end of September against the defendants from that town.
The OCDH considers the Manicaragua ruling to be a typical one and constitutes “a fraud whose sole purpose is to criminalize civic protest, serving as an instrument of repression and the abrogation of human rights,” in addition to being handed down “in a context of increasing repression as the only response to serious social problems.”
The organization insists that there are no guarantees in the island’s judicial processes and that the principle of legality is being overridden by condemning actions that are not defined crimes, although it does not specify which of the acts it refers to. “The absence of a duly proven crime should have resulted in the acquittal of the accused and their immediate release, given that they have been illegally deprived of their liberty since October 2024,” it adds.
Among the many details the organization questions is the fact that, in its view, the witnesses’ testimony is unreliable, as they “indistinctly” identified the defendants from a group of at least 100 people. “As is customary, the court automatically gives full weight to the testimony of officials from the Ministry of the Interior and local government, which is incompatible with judicial impartiality,” it argues.
Furthermore, it argues, there was a lack of logical reasoning, since the court fails to explain “the causal link between the individual actions and the impact on public order, nor does it define the threshold that distinguishes a legitimate protest from a criminal act.” Furthermore, the court uses “politically sectarian language, such as ‘people opposed to the revolution’ or ‘enemy media,’ [which] seriously compromises the court’s objectivity and blurs the legal analysis.”
The decision was announced on the same day that the Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC) publicly denounced the situation of prisoners in Cuba, 60 of whom it estimates have died in state custody.
The facts are collected in a report that runs from March 2024 to the same month in 2025, a period in which “1,858 events related to persons deprived of liberty in Cuba” were recorded.
The events are described in a report covering the period from March 2024 to the same month in 2025, during which “1,858 incidents involving persons deprived of liberty in Cuba were recorded. Of these, 1,330 constituted human rights violations, revealing a pattern of institutional violence and a critical deterioration of prison conditions.”
The document, titled What the Numbers Tell, specifies that of the 60 deaths, 47 were related to the victims’ physical and mental health, as well as lack of care. Another seven were due to direct physical violence, while the remaining six are unspecified.
The most common acts of violence in prisons are repression and harassment, followed by inadequate medical care, poor living conditions, and inadequate food. There is also a “persistent” use of actions that violate human rights, ranging from isolation and transfers as punishment to practices bordering on torture, such as the Turkish bed (immobilization of prisoners) or the bicycle (which involves throwing handcuffed inmates from the top of stairs).
Common-law and political prisoners are subjected to these practices, which are compounded by overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. The latter constitute 329 of the 545 identified as affected. The CDPC urges the international community to monitor and promote oversight mechanisms for these practices, which also result in total impunity for officials. “The Cuban prison system is today a space of human degradation and political repression. These are not isolated failures, but rather a structural policy of punishment and silence that requires a firm international response,” they warn.
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