During the months of October and November 2025, More than a dozen Cuban political prisoners began hunger strikes as an extreme protest against various abuses. that the State commits against them.
The most emblematic recent case is that of Yosvany Rosell García Caso, a political prisoner from the July 11th massacre, who began a hunger strike on October 23rd in the Cuba Sí prison in the city of Holguín, in protest against his imprisonment and to demand total isolation within the prison establishment. Weeks later, the opposition leader was transferred to a hospital in critical condition, and on his 40th day of hunger strike, he decided to end it.
In mid-November, Nine political prisoners also began hunger strikes in different prisons across the country. They are Daniel Alfaro Fría — Guanajay Prison (Artemisa); Aníbal Yasel Palau Jacinto — Melena 2 (Mayabeque); Walfrido Rodríguez Piloto — Jóvenes del Cotorro (Ivanov), Havana; José Antonio Pompa López — Agüica (Matanzas); Onaikel Infante — Agüica (Matanzas); Josiel Guía Piloto — Agüica (Matanzas); Lázaro Piloto Romero — Agüica (Matanzas); Adrián Fernando Domínguez Hidalgo — Agüica (Matanzas); and Óscar Corría Sánchez — Contramaestre Police Unit (Santiago de Cuba).
Currently, Cubalex received information from a hunger strike initiated on December 1st by political prisoner Leoncio Rodríguez Ponce in Holguín and his transfer to a punishment cell as retaliation.
From 2022 to the present, the Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC) has underreported Six Cuban political prisoners died as a result of hunger strikes.
These reports put into perspective how hunger strikes continue to be used on the island by political prisoners and human rights defenders as a last resort, when other avenues have been exhausted.
This is not a suicidal act, but a deliberate, rational and political act, where the body becomes the only means of communication available when other avenues have been closed, as is the case in Cuba.
International Law vs. Cuban Regulations
In international law, this practice has been linked to freedom of expression, bodily autonomy and the prohibition of torture, and forced feeding has been questioned as possible cruel treatment or torture.
According to Cubalex, the hunger strike is not in itself the violation; the violation lies in the state response; for example, punishment, incommunicado detention, medical neglect, and forced feeding.
Meanwhile, within the current Cuban legal framework, the Constitution of the Republic itself recognizes and guarantees human rights as inalienable, indivisible, and mandatory for all authorities. It also contains a general clause limiting rights, which allows for their restriction based on “the rights of others, collective security, general welfare, public order, the Constitution, and laws.”, which in practice allows ordinary laws to limit even essential rights. Article 45 is identified in the document itself as incompatible with international law, because it leaves in the hands of the legislator and the administration the possibility of limiting even absolute rights - such as the prohibition of torture - and allows laws such as Law 152/2022 to "constitutionalize" abusive restrictions.
Law 152/2022 on Criminal Enforcement and its Regulations (2023) do not recognize hunger strikes or voluntary starvation as protests or the exercise of rights. This omission is not neutral: it allows for its treatment as serious indiscipline, a “position of power,” or “disobedience” toward prison authorities. Article 118, paragraph l) of Law 152 defines as serious indiscipline: “Making individual or collective complaints or petitions as an expression of assuming positions of power or disobedience toward prison authorities.” This wording fits perfectly with the logic of hunger strikes, enabling their punishment without explicitly naming them. Articles 121–122 provide for disciplinary sanctions such as solitary confinement, regression to a less restrictive regime, and suspension of rights, even when the person is in severe physical decline. The 2023 Regulations introduce the medical dimension only to certify whether the person can be sanctioned, not to protect them. In these cases, the doctor integrates himself into the disciplinary logic, not the logic of care.
On the other hand, Law 160/2022 of the Attorney General's Office imposes on this institution the duty to verify respect for the rights of persons deprived of their liberty and the duty to act in the face of violations of constitutional rights and to restore legality. It also grants it the power—and obligation—to order immediate release in cases of unlawful detention or serious violations. In cases of prolonged hunger strike, these duties become reinforced obligations of active supervision, investigation and adoption of protective measures.
Cuba's violations of international standards are evident. Although domestic legislation does not expressly mention the Malta Declaration nor that of Tokyo, These international instruments prohibit the forced feeding of competent people on hunger strike, consider this practice as inhuman treatment or torture, and require respect for the patient's advance directives.
When the Cuban State maintains handcuffs and punitive surveillance, denies timely or independent medical assistance and uses hunger as a pretext to deepen the punishment, it places itself in contradiction with these standards and with the international interpretation of the absolute prohibition of torture.
Historical background
The hunger strike in Cuba has a history spanning more than six decades and originated as an extreme form of resistance in a system where public protest was suppressed from the early years of the Revolution. It emerged as early as the 1960s. figure of the planted, A political prisoner who refused any form of collaboration with the State: they rejected forced labor, re-education classes, and prison regulations. This identity of resistance was consolidated in prisons like the Isle of Pines and La Cabaña, where those who refused faced isolation, physical violence, and the suppression of basic rights.
One of the most visible milestones of that first stage was the so-called “uniform war.” After the state imposed the blue uniform to erase the status of political prisoner, hundreds of inmates refused to wear it and remained semi-naked for years, giving rise to the iconic image of the “standing in his underwear.” The “Re-education Plan,” designed to break the prisoners through material incentives in exchange for political submission, unleashed some of the most severe episodes of psychological torture, family blackmail, and denial of medical care documented by the IACHR.
The legal criminalization of dissent, promoted since the 1960s and consolidated with the 1987 Penal Code and its reforms, deepened the use of hunger strikes as an extreme measure. Legal concepts such as “pre-criminal dangerousness,” the crime of “contempt,” and Law 88 allowed for the prosecution of opponents as common criminals, leading many to resort to fasting to regain their political standing and denounce systemic abuses.
Since the 1970s, the hunger strike has left martyrs whose deaths marked turning points. The foundational case was Pedro Luis Boitel, who died in 1972 after 53 days of hunger strike in conditions of medical abandonment. Decades later, activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in 2010 after an 85-day hunger strike, an event that provoked international condemnation and led to the release of the Group of 75. They are joined by Wilman Villar Mendoza, who died in 2012, and dozens of prisoners documented by human rights organizations.
In the 2000s and 2010s, with the rise of the internet, hunger strikes also became an act of public communication. Activists like Guillermo 'Coco' Fariñas achieved international impact by using their own bodies as a tool to denounce censorship, repression, and human rights violations. His case, and the recognition he received—such as the Sakharov Prize—confirmed the political and global dimension of these protests.
In the last decade, the practice has resurfaced strongly among artists and young people linked to the San Isidro Movement (MSI) and among the protesters of July 11th. The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara brought the hunger strike to the forefront of cultural and digital debate, while leaders like José Daniel Ferrer have repeatedly used it from prison isolation. The persistence of these protests until 2025 demonstrates a historical continuity: faced with the impossibility of civic participation, the hunger strike remains in Cuba the last resort for demanding dignity, denouncing torture, and keeping alive the tradition of the protesters.
A hunger and/or thirst strike is, legally, an act of political expression and bodily autonomy, protected by international human rights and bioethics standards.
From a comparative perspective, while international law tends to consider forced feeding and the punitive use of health as possible forms of torture or cruel treatment, the Cuban system, as it is designed and applied, criminalizes bodily protest and creates normative and practical conditions that facilitate precisely those acts.