Denouncing Prison Conditions in Cuba Can Get You Killed

On November 30, 2024, Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas died in a Cuban prison, officially attributed to asphyxiation from hanging. However, Manuel’s body and his clothes bore signs of torture, including muddy footprints and urine-soaked pants. In the video that went viral, his mother, Dania María Esplugas, claims that her son was murdered by prison officials. She believes Manuel did not die by suicide, the official claim, but was beaten to death, with his hanging staged to cover up the abuse. Dania observed marks on his neck, back, and arms, which led her to conclude he was tortured with a military belt and baton before being hung.

Manuel de Jesús, 27, was arrested on July 17, 2021, for sharing videos of the July 11 protests on social media. He was charged with public disorder and vandalism and sentenced to six years in prison after being detained for a year and a half without trial. His mother’s attempts to secure his release through habeas corpus petitions were denied. He was a prisoner of conscience.

While in prison, Manuel faced harsh conditions, including bedbug and rat infestations, lack of medical care for scabies, poor nutrition, and being held in close quarters with violent criminals. His death in prison drew attention, and reports suggested he had been beaten before he died. Some inmates indicated he was hanged by authorities, not by suicide, as officially claimed.

This is not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of abuse by the Cuban dictatorship that systematically violates international norms.

Christopher Simmons, a retired Defense Intelligence Agency Counterintelligence Officer, testifying before the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2012, described the regime in Havana as follows. “In many respects, Cuba can be accurately characterized as a violent criminal organization masquerading as a government. The island’s five intelligence services exist not to protect the nation, but to ensure the survival of the regime.”

The Cuban government has blocked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from visiting its prisons for over sixty-four years. No visits occurred between July 1959 and April 1988, and after international criticism, the ICRC was allowed access in 1988 and 1989. However, there have been no further visits since then. This stance is similar to that of Beijing, with Human Rights Watch’s 1999 World Report noting that both Cuba and China have prohibited the ICRC from providing basic humanitarian aid to prisoners.

Prisoners of conscience have died in Cuban prisons while protesting mistreatment by government officials, a tragic pattern that has persisted for decades. High-profile cases include student leader Pedro Luis Boitel (1972), human rights defender Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), UNPACU member Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012), and political prisoner Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros (2020). These deaths highlight the ongoing repression and human rights abuses faced by political dissidents in Cuba, and the absence of international oversight.

Political prisoners are particularly targeted because from within the prisons, they continue to defend human rights and report on prison conditions, and report on the mistreatment of all prisoners by officials. This leads to a special animosity against them by regime officials. Thanks to them, international organizations are able to report, for example, that in the last two years, 72 Cuban prisoners have died in custody. This is a partial number, but without their courageous witness, and willingness to speak out, the poor conditions in the prison, and these deaths would be unknown.

Estimates suggest that the total number of political prisoners in Cuba over the past sixty-five years is in the hundreds of thousands, although the Cuban government does not disclose official figures.

Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas was targeted because he continued to speak out against the injustices, and poor prison conditions. As did Orlando Zapata Tamayo who was murdered fourteen years earlier, but subjected to ill-treatment for seven years.

According to Amnesty International, on October 20, 2003, after requesting medical attention, Orlando Zapata was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison, and beaten by prison officials. This left his back covered with lacerations. Despite the ill-treatment he suffered, Zapata managed to smuggle a letter out of the prison afterward. It was published in 2004, where Zapata addressed the Cuban opposition. In it, he wrote:

“My dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to…”

Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s suffering and eventual death in prison in February 2010—like Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas’s—should prompt a demand for truth and justice, as well as a free future for Cuba. On this International Human Rights Day, Iet us pray for them and other victims of the dictatorship, and redouble our efforts that truth be known and justice be done for these and all martyrs of the Cuban dictatorship.

John J. Suárez is the Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or VOC.