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Category: Cuba & human rights

Three layers to jail you over a message

A phone showing a lit message bubble, locked inside a padlocked metal strongbox; the box inside a glass case watched by cameras, and all of it inside an iron cage closed with another padlock, on the seafront at night

To understand why a message can put you in prison in Cuba, you have to understand that it is not one law that allows it: it is three stacked layers, built over three years, each covering what the previous one left out. Layer one: punishment without trial (2019) Decree-Law 370 turns publishing “information contrary to […]

The law that takes your phone

A uniformed officer with a duty belt takes a phone from a civilian's hand in the street, with Havana's Capitolio and the Cuban flag behind them

There is a Cuban law that does not talk about politics. It talks about “computing”. It is called Decree-Law 370, it came into force in 2019, and on the street everyone knows it by another name: the Whip Law. Its article 68, subsection i), defines as a violation “spreading, through public data transmission networks, information […]

You do not have to publish: sharing is enough

A phone on a wooden table with the send icon lit; a line of light leaves the screen and reaches a pair of handcuffs hanging on the wall, which casts the shadow of prison bars. Beside it, a framed family photograph

On September 16, 2024, the Municipal Court of Cienfuegos sentenced José Manuel Barreiro Rouco, a 52-year-old barber, to two years and six months in prison. The crime: some memes about Miguel Díaz-Canel, Fidel and Raúl Castro, shared in a WhatsApp group of eleven people, all of them his own family: brothers, cousins, aunts. His defense […]