Amnesty International on Friday urged Cuban authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Félix Navarro, Sayli Navarro and Roberto Pérez Fonseca, two years after naming them prisoners of conscience.
In a public statement issued Friday, the international human rights organization stressed that the three dissidents remain arbitrarily detained solely for peacefully exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Amnesty International emphasized that the continued incarceration of the Navarro family and Pérez Fonseca violates fundamental guarantees under international human rights law, breaching established jurisprudence from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) regarding the prohibition of arbitrary detention and state-sanctioned political silencing.
The imprisonment of the dissidents stems from the historic July 11, 2021 anti-government demonstrations, widely known as the 11J protests, which marked the largest wave of civil unrest on the island in decades. In the wake of the demonstrations, international monitors including Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented extensive arbitrary detentions, physical abuse, and opaque, closed-door summary proceedings that violated international standards of due process and fair trial rights.
The IACHR has previously criticized the Cuban National Assembly for adopting a new Criminal Code which uses ambiguously worded language to define offenses such as sedition and crimes against constitutional order, and has noted that these concerns are compounded by the lack of independent and impartial judicial oversight.
Félix Navarro, a veteran political dissident and founder of the Pedro Luis Boitel Democracy Party, along with his daughter and fellow activist Sayli Navarro, were taken into custody after attempting to inquire about detained demonstrators at a local police station. Roberto Pérez Fonseca received a lengthy prison sentence following protests in San Antonio de los Baños, where authorities accused him of damaging a portrait of former leader Fidel Castro.
Human rights organizations such as Cuban Prisoners Defenders have repeatedly raised alarm regarding deteriorating health conditions, restricted access to medical care, and prolonged punitive isolation inside Cuban correctional facilities, contravening the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules). Furthermore, Amnesty International has pointed out that state security forces frequently target the relatives of political prisoners with constant surveillance, arbitrary short-term detentions, and unlawful movement restrictions intended to silence public advocacy.
Amnesty International reiterated that under foundational international legal norms, holding individuals in state custody solely for peaceful political expression constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of liberty. The organization urged the Cuban government to dismantle the domestic legal mechanisms utilized to penalize dissent, cease its systemic harassment of civil society actors, and grant immediate freedom to all individuals imprisoned for exercising their fundamental rights.
