Testimonies show that authorities use, among other biases, “the maternal role to try to get women to abandon activism.”
14ymedio/EFE, Madrid, 26 November 2025 — On Wednesday, the human rights organisation Amnesty International (AI) denounced the violence perpetrated by the Cuban regime against women activists, journalists and human rights defenders through gender-based abuse and authoritarian practices.
“It’s not traditional repression,” said Johana Cilano Peláez, AI’s regional researcher for the Caribbean and author of the report They Want Us To Be Silent, but we continue to resist: authoritarian practices and state violence against women in Cuba, are documented in the 40-page report,” she told the EFE news agency.
The activists also receive threats of “denial of food, medicine, visits, telephone calls and harsher sentences for their detained children” if they continue their work, explains the researcher.
Many mothers and wives of people imprisoned for political actions have been forced to strip naked in order to be allowed to visit them.
Amnesty also denounces “the subordination of the judicial system to political power,” the lack of mechanisms for reporting and redress, and the absence of a comprehensive law against gender-based violence as “factors that perpetuate impunity.”
Cilano Peláez emphasises that repression does not affect all women equally, given that institutional violence intersects with gender, race and socioeconomic status.
“Black women suffered more severe treatment, and physical violence occurred earlier than in the case of white women. We also saw that activists from poorer neighbourhoods or those further away from the capital were more vulnerable,” she points out.
For the report, AI interviewed 52 people, 34 of whom were female victims, specifically analysing the cases of five of them. Yenisey Taboada, Luz Escobar, Carolina Barrero, María Matienzo, Camila Lobón and Alina Bárbara López were interviewed and revealed that the pattern of state violence is neither incidental nor isolated, but rather “structural and sustained”.
Furthermore, black women, single mothers and women of diverse sexual orientations face aggravated forms of violence, which requires an urgent intersectional response, warns AI.
Amnesty International points out that these situations occur in an environment of restrictions on the exercise and defence of human rights, where the subordination of the judicial system to political power, the lack of mechanisms for reporting and redress, and the absence of comprehensive legislation against gender-based violence perpetuate impunity.
“The international community cannot continue to remain silent in the face of the differentiated repression suffered by women in Cuba,” stressed Ana Piquer, Amnesty International’s regional director for the Americas. “Women defenders in Cuba are punished not only for speaking out, but also for being mothers, journalists and social leaders. The state uses gender-based violence as a tool of repression: it seeks to break their dignity, their family environment and their collective strength,” she added.
The organisation stresses that the lack of guarantees, the lack of judicial independence and the absence of political freedoms stifle any potential legislation that, on paper, appears beneficial for the protection of women.
The document includes a section analysing Cuban legislation, which was praised yesterday by the official press as a benchmark and model for the protection and integration of women in public life. AI considers, however, that there is a recurring lack of statistical data – specifically on deaths due to gender-based violence, whose announced updated register has been reserved for internal consumption – and an absence of regulations demanded by feminist associations.
What’s more, the organisation emphasises that the lack of guarantees, the lack of judicial independence and the absence of political freedoms stifle any potential legislation that, on paper, appears beneficial for the protection of women.
The report concludes with a specific section calling on the Cuban authorities to end gender-based harassment of women activists. “It is time for States, especially inter-American organisations and the European Union, to demand concrete protection measures. State repression against women activists and defenders in Cuba constitutes a form of institutional gender-based violence that must be made visible and publicly condemned.”
AI calls for specific protection measures for women human rights defenders and sustained monitoring by the international community.
“What we saw is that repression against women is systemic and differentiated. The state exploits motherhood and punishes those who have less visibility or resources more harshly. That is why sustained international action is needed,” concludes Cilano Peláez.
Translated by GH
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