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Two years ago, citizens of Nuevitas municipality, in central Cuba, protested against the lack of electricity and were imprisoned by the regime. A month ago, the Municipal Court of Camagüey issued sentences for 13 people, which include sentences of up to 15 years in prison.
While the Cuban regime condemned the demonstrators for crimes such as sedition and enemy propaganda, the reality is that Mayelin Rodriguez, 22 years old, will be imprisoned for 15 years for transmitting the citizen protest via Facebook.
The sentence is part of a broader trend of government repression in Cuba, where people have been convicted for expressing themselves publicly on social networks with the intention of limiting and generating fear of those who use this resource for denunciation.
What happened in Nuevitas
Nuevitas, a coastal city of about 60,000 people, was the scene in August 2022 of some of Cuba’s largest anti-government demonstrations since July 11, 2021. These protests began when the country was experiencing prolonged blackouts of up to 18 hours.
On that occasion, the regime arrested more than 1,500 people, including peaceful demonstrators and bystanders. The trial against 14 people who participated in the demonstrations in Nuevitas concluded in January 2024, and the sentences were up to 15 years in prison for crimes such as sedition, enemy propaganda, sabotage, concealment, acts against state security, attack and resistance.
The highest sentence was received by Mayelin Rodriguez, who was 21 years old when she took her cell phone and recorded part of the protests in August 2022. If she serves that sentence in full, she will be close to four decades of life when she gets out of prison.
Only one person, a woman accused of sedition, was acquitted for lack of evidence.
Human rights organizations raise their voices
The international community has reacted with concern and criticism to the convictions of individuals in Cuba for participating in protests and transmitting information about them.
The sentences, announced on April 27, have also been repudiated by the United States and a number of countries, which see in the penalties an attempt to repress and silence the growing discontent on the island, which is going through a serious economic crisis, in addition to shortages of essential goods such as food, fuel and electricity.
Human rights organizations have also raised the alarm in the midst of a sentence with which the Cuban regime intends to exemplify the consequences of protesting against it.
According to last March’s monthly report by the Madrid-based Prisoners Defenders, there are 1,092 people imprisoned in Cuba for political reasons.
What is being talked about online
From ProBox we analyze the conversation on social media platforms around the announcement of the sentence against the 14 Cubans who participated in the anti-government protests in Nuevitas,
The findings show that while the Cuban regime tried to talk as little as possible about the issue online, the civil community echoed the information and protested the sentence. There were 1,391 mentions of the issue by civil society, which were registered between April 14 and May 18, with the peak of the conversation on May 15 with 206 mentions.
Likewise, protest mentions about the case were mainly concentrated on X (Twitter) with 60.1% of the mentions (836 mentions), followed by Facebook with 19.55% (272 mentions), then Instagram with 18.04% (251 mentions), and lastly, TikTok with 2.3% (32 mentions).
In the context of the civil society conversation, words such as murderous dictatorship (with 67 mentions), political prisoners (with 34 mentions), Cuban people (with 29 mentions), free Cuba (with 20 mentions), among others, stood out. In addition to the hashtags used for the search (#abajoladictadura, #cubaestadoterrorista, #cubaesunadictadura), the use of #CubaEstadoFallido (with 203 mentions), #SOSCuba (with 116 mentions), #PatriaYVida (with 96 mentions), #CubaPaLaCalle (with 80 mentions), among others, stood out.
In terms of the number of mentions, the San Nicolás de Bari account “No + Communism” stood out with 91 mentions with the keywords used, generating 3,261,622 impressions on Facebook. On the other hand, the account that had the greatest reach on the topic was ADN Cuba, which with only 4 mentions regarding the topic generated 3,774,152 impressions on Facebook.
The 1,391 mentions of the issue by civil society contrast with the scarce 85 mentions registered in the official narrative. This demonstrates the regime’s intention of not making much noise about the issue that unmasks it (even more) as a government that violates human rights; at the same time it exposes the citizen protest that resists the living conditions on the island.
In a country where the traditional media are completely controlled by the State, social media plays an indispensable role in the dissemination of news and information and protest by civil society. This is very clear to the Cuban regime, which through laws, decrees, and exemplary sentences, such as that of the 13 convicted in the Nuevitas case, tries to dissuade Cubans from any kind of protest; clearly violating the human rights of the protesters, who now not only cannot go out to the streets to protest, but also cannot do so in the virtual space.
