News · Rights
Cubalex documents 122 deaths in Cuban detention centres between February 2024 and August 2026
The report «Hunger Strike in Cuba: Causes and State Responsibility» links 87 of those deaths to a lack of medical care or to negligence, according to Infobae, which reports on the organisation's document.
Cubalex recorded 122 deaths in detention facilities between 1 February 2024 and 31 August 2026, according to Infobae. Of the documented total, 87 deaths were related to a lack of medical care or to negligence, and seven cases date from July and August 2026, all linked to the withholding of care in state custody.
The organisation argues that the death of someone protesting through hunger cannot automatically be attributed to suicide, because the state retains control over food, water, medicine, health care, family visits and access to legal defence for those in its custody.
Cubalex traces the origin of these protests to the ineffectiveness of the legal avenues set out in the rules: appeals, cassation petitions, reviews, complaints to the prosecutor's office and requests tied to the execution of sentences. According to its analysis, those mechanisms guarantee no independent review and do not remedy the abuses reported, above all in cases that those affected consider politically motivated.
The report includes the case of Carlos Alberto Macdonald Ennis, held since March 2024 with no formal charge, trial or settled account of the acts attributed to him, and whose habeas corpus petition was rejected without the court examining the irregularities reported. It also records the hunger strikes of Ángel Jesús Véliz Marcano, at the Kilo 9 prison in Camagüey, who was demanding transfer to the minimum-severity regime and access to parole, and of Rolando Yusef Pérez Morera, over the refusal to grant him such benefits.
The material gathered by the organisation describes outbreaks of scabies, tuberculosis, dengue and COVID-19 in the prisons, along with shortages of medicine, overcrowding, poor hygiene and difficulties accessing drinking water. Prison authorities control diagnoses, treatments, hospital transfers, medical files and detainees' contact with their families.
Some prisoners began hunger strikes to request a transfer to a civilian hospital or access to medicine. Cubalex warns that denying care as punishment or as a means of pressure may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and even torture, and that parole, extra-penal licence or the move to less severe regimes, all provided for in the Criminal Enforcement Act, may be made conditional on displays of repentance or ideological submission.
Sources: Infobae · Serie Yamacoa: Presos políticos en Cuba (Prisoners Defenders)
Data updated: 2026-11-10T04:15:00.000Z