José Gabriel Barrenechea Chávez, a Cuban writer, journalist and researcher, has been detained by the Cuban authorities since 8 November 2024. After participating in protests over Cuba’s ongoing energy crisis, he was arrested for allegedly leading a demonstration and was charged with ‘public disorder’, an accusation often used to suppress dissent in Cuba. Chávez has denied the allegation and denounced the serious irregularities surrounding his case, including the lack of due process and the fact that he has been denied access to independent legal advice. If convicted, he faces a sentence of three to eight years in prison.

Since his imprisonment, Chávez has endured other human rights violations, including isolation from his family. His detention caused immense hardship for his 84-year-old mother, Zoila, who was suffering from advanced cancer at the time of his arrest. Zoila had been completely dependent on her son for her care. The authorities refused to allow her permission to visit her son in prison. She died on 4 May. 

The following day, Chávez was briefly transferred from prison to the municipality of Encrucijada, Villa Clara province, so that he could attend his mother’s funeral. Camila Acosta, an independent journalist, posted on Facebook that the event took place under heavy surveillance and lasted less than an hour. 

Chávez is currently being held in La Pendiente prison in Santa Clara, known for its overcrowding and poor conditions. His own health has deteriorated significantly in recent months. He went on a ten-day hunger strike shortly after his arrest and is now suffering from extreme malnutrition, stomach and skin infections, sleep disorders, anxiety and depression. 

Chávez has faced systematic harassment since 2019 for his journalism. The Cuban authorities have subjected him to a travel ban, employment restrictions and brief periods of detention, while also censoring his books.

Chávez’s published works include Tubular Bells and Other Stories, Cuba: An Island Between Apathy and Revolution and José Antonio Saco Runs out of Arguments. Before his arrest, he contributed to various independent Cuban and international media outlets, including 14ymedio, Diario de Cuba and Latinoamérica 21, and co-edited the magazine Cuadernos de Pensamiento Plural. 

In an article for Latinoamérica 21 entitled ‘The Role of the Internal Opposition in Cuba’, published on 7 May 2024, Chávez wrote: 

If more than four decades of peaceful opposition inside Cuba have demonstrated anything, it is the impossibility of articulating a mass opposition movement inside the country. Those of us who have been in the internal opposition for years know what happens when you decide to get down to work on it: they will surround you with undercover agents of the State Security, not only to be aware of your every step and plan, but above all subtly [to] promote the differences within your movement, multiply the suspicions of each other, make it impossible to agree within it, and finally cause its implosion … if you insist or begin to have any success in your purpose, they will target you, the organizer, limit your freedom of movement, or even put you in jail, if you do not accept exile. 

Cuba is still a totalitarian dictatorship, with a very efficient system of prophylactic repression … To imagine an articulated mass opposition movement inside Cuba, capable of carrying out massive, planned, and coordinated actions, while totalitarianism prevails … is only a dream. 

Readers might like to send appeals expressing concern at the detention and ill-treatment of journalist José Gabriel Barrenechea Chávez and calling for his immediate release; demanding that the Cuban government end its repression of artists, journalists and writers critical of the authorities; and urging the authorities to honour their commitments to uphold the rights of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Cuba is a signatory.

Appeals to be addressed to:

Miguel Díaz-Canel
President of the Republic of Cuba
Email: despacho@presidencia.gob.cu
Twitter: @DiazCanelB

Oscar Silvera Martínez
Minister of Justice
Email: apoblacion@minjus.gob.cu
Twitter: @CubaMinjus

Her Excellency Bárbara Elena Montalvo Álvarez
Cuban Embassy
167 High Holborn
London WC1V 6PA
Fax: (+44) 020 7836 2602
Email: SecEmbajador@uk.embacuba.cu

Update: The health of the prominent British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah (LR, Feb 2018; July 2022; Sept 2023; April 2025) sharply deteriorated in April. He was treated in Wadi El-Natrun Prison in Egypt after experiencing vomiting and stomach issues. El-Fattah has been on hunger strike since 1 March 2025 after hearing news of the hospitalisation of his mother, Laila Soueif, in London following her own hunger strike. Human rights organisations continue to call for the UK government to take urgent action to secure his release.