Inmates reveal beating, hunger and infectious diseases in Cuba prisons

Common and political inmates in the Cuban prison system denounced from prison the dramatic conditions that suffer in the island’s prisons.

The Independent Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, based in Madrid, sent the testimonies to Martí News.

From the provincial prison of Guantanamo, the common prisoner Eloyki Matos, 40, sanctioned for the crime of an attack to 14 years in jail and resident in Baracoa, denounced the denial by the prison authorities to provide specialized medical assistance despite his deteriorated state of health.

«The problem is that I am sick, I have a dilated myocardiopathy, I have ischemic heart disease, I have to go on a test in Santiago, the catete, to put on a stent and a pacemaker, and they have not taken me,» he said.

Matos’s situation is critical, the doctor of the prison warned him.

«I am almost dead. The doctor told me: Company does not do that you are going to die. (…) I am permanent in the medical post, I cannot lower the stairs or climb them, and every day they put a different lie,» said the political prisoner.

Matos, who has swelling in one leg and does not have access to medications to treat his illness, survived a heart attack, but fears not running with the same fate if he repeats himself. «I am disrupting and they have me here, and in the end they do not give the extrapenal, nor do they take me to the hospital, nor do they take me anywhere,» the inmate lamented.

Dixan Gaínza Moré, a political prisoner imprisoned for his participation in the popular protests of July 11, 2021, caught attention to the bad conditions suffered by inmates in the kilo prison, 8 in the city of Camagüey.

«The prisoners do not have a toothpaste, we have no soap. I have been able to use pasta a week; I am brushing with salt. They have no food, every day with potatoes, or the next day a little flour. It is a very large overcrowding of prisoners. There are neither there are no medications, nor any type of attention that requires a prison and prisons,» said the activist.

Another inmate of that prison, also known as the 26, the common prisoner Roberto Karel Aparicio Costa, 43 years old and resident in Bayamo, denounced that he was physically mistreated a week ago by one of the jailers. His family, he said, made the complaint with the Military Prosecutor’s Office, but has not received an answer.

«The problem was that on Monday of last week they gave me a beating here. I am full of complete blows. Here the prosecutor has not come. My family complained to the Prosecutor’s Office. Nobody has come here. The same head of the interior order gave me the beating,» said the inmate.

Daniel Moreno de la Peña, held in the prison of Bladato, in Santiago de Cuba, accused of the crime of «other acts against state security,» he referred to the epidemiological situation in that prison.

«Here we are quarantine for tuberculosis, in detachment 19, which are 86 men. Here, low weight, distributions …., hunger,» he described.

And from the prison the task, in the city of Bayamo, province of Granma, the activist and opponent Jacqueline García Jaenz, convicted of the common crime of theft, which she assures was manufactured by her opposition activism, said she is sick and does not have medicines.

«I have spent the entire night with vomiting, all night vomiting, and there is no medication in this place (…). There is a dengue outbreak here. I have a tea this morning and, well, I already have the stomach that my God, my God! Reflect, brother, bad that I feel bad, and here there is nothing, not for the headache, nothing of medications,» said Garcia Jaenz.

The most recent report of the Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC) reveals that, during the month of March, four people deprived of liberty died in the Bladato prison, in Santiago de Cuba. These deaths raise to 18 the deaths in Cuban prisons registered by that independent organization only in the first quarter of 2025.