News · Rights
An 11J political prisoner denounces hunger and unpaid labor at the La Lima prison camp
Eliezet Sesma Diago, sentenced to nine years over the July 2021 protests, denounces half-raw rice, a lack of medicines and shifts of more than ten hours with no pay since January at the La Lima prison camp in Havana, according to testimony circulated by the Observatory of Cultural Rights and reported by Radio Martí.
Cuban political prisoner Eliezet Sesma Diago, sentenced to nine years in prison for taking part in the July 2021 protests, says that at the La Lima prison camp, in the Havana municipality of Guanabacoa, inmates are served half-raw rice that makes them vomit and that the medical post has no medicines. His testimony reached the Observatory of Cultural Rights (ODC), which issued a public alert, and Radio Martí circulated it.
According to that same testimony, inmates who work outside the camp in shifts of more than ten hours have not been paid since January 2026, and during searches guards confiscate the food they get to stave off hunger, from a bag of bread to a package of spaghetti. Sesma Diago says that food is not returned to the families who brought it and that there is no way to lodge a complaint.
The prisoner describes lunches rounded out with a watery pasta, hard cassava, a sour portion of guava paste and a soup that is sometimes little more than hot water with some seasoning, and breakfasts of bread or of the previous day's cassava. He adds that three sacks of sugar received by the facility lasted barely three days.
State Security threatened Sesma Diago to make him stop denouncing prison conditions and weeks ago summoned his wife with the same purpose, according to the report. The ODC demanded guarantees for his physical and psychological integrity, adequate food, medical care and payment for the work done, as well as an end to any reprisals against the prisoner and his family, and repeated its demand for the immediate release of him and of the rest of the political prisoners in Cuba.
The case is not isolated. Martí Noticias reported days ago that Roilán Álvarez Rensoler, held in the Holguín provincial prison, had food and belongings confiscated in a search on 2 October, and Radio Martí reported a tuberculosis outbreak at the Boniato prison, in Santiago de Cuba, with at least three units under quarantine because of overcrowding and a lack of medical care.
Sources: Infobae · Serie Yamacoa: Presos políticos en Cuba (Prisoners Defenders)
Data updated: 2026-10-22T17:45:00.000Z