Free Cuba Now!

End unmonitored prisons. Demand ICRC access. Help Cuban political prisoners and their families.

 

Prison Cells

 

Cuba’s prisons have been closed to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) since 1989. Independent and incomplete tallies from mid-2026 put the number of political prisoners above 1,300. Families report loved ones beaten to death, hunger inside the prison cells and scarcity outside them. No outside monitor walks those corridors, registers the detainees, or can press for better conditions or medical care. That combination—mass political imprisonment plus total opacity—is not a side issue. It is how a closed system hides its weakest point and keeps the rest of the population intimidated. The same pattern has appeared in other dictatorships.

 

Where diasporas treated their imprisoned compatriots as a central cause, and where the ICRC or equivalent monitors eventually gained access, prisoners became a source of leverage rather than a secret. The records from Poland after martial law, Chile after the 1973 coup, the Philippines under Marcos, and Robben Island under apartheid show what that combination can do.

 

Documented data shows widespread severe malnutrition among prisonersand food insecurity for their families today.

From Solidarity to People Power

Cuba’s communist dictatorship holds more than 1,300 political prisoners, according to independent tallies from mid-2026, while systematically denying the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to its prisons since 1989. Cuba’s prisons are closed to inspection. The prison system lacks independent oversight.

By contrast, the Geneva-based organization has conducted more than 100 visits since 2002 to the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) in southeastern Cuba.

The only territory on the island of Cuba where prison conditions are independently inspected is the area controlled by the United States.

This is not an abstract humanitarian issue.

In short, a minority of families receive organized external support; most depend on their own strained resources under repression. The absence of ICRC or any other independent monitor inside Cuban prisons leaves the large majority without systematic humanitarian protection. That is why demands for access and for targeted solidarity remain central.