Óscar Corría Sánchez, 25, a participant in the July 11, 2021 protests, has been detained for 42 days today and continues his hunger strike at the Contramaestre police unit in Santiago de Cuba. Tomorrow will mark one month since he began his protest through prolonged fasting, according to information we have received.
He was arrested on October 2, 2025, after appearing at the Contramaestre National Revolutionary Police (PNR) station for a summons, where he was charged with disobedience and contempt for refusing to work for the state. Since his arrest, his family has been unable to see him, give him clean clothes, or obtain any information about his health or the conditions of his detention.
The information received indicates that Óscar Corría is cousin of political prisoner Wilman Villar Mendoza, an activist with UNPACU, who died in 2012 after 56 days on hunger strike in Aguadores prison, also in Santiago de Cuba.
Villar Mendoza, 31, and a father of two daughters, was sentenced in a summary trial to four years in prison for participating in an anti-government protest in Contramaestre. During his hunger strike, he was held in solitary confinement, naked and without adequate medical attention. He contracted pneumonia and died at Juan Bruno Zayas Hospital from multiple organ failure, pneumonia, and septic shock. Following his death, Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience.
Cubalex warns about the serious risk to the life and the integrity of Óscar Corría Sánchez and we remember the case of Wilman Villar Mendoza as a painful precedent that demonstrates a pattern of punishments, negligence and state abandonment against people deprived of their liberty for political reasons in Cuba.
We demand that the Cuban State guarantee immediate medical attention, end reprisals, and release all people detained for political reasons.