Five years ago this month, thousands of Cubans filled the streets of the island nation and demanded their freedom. They were hungry, they were tired, they were living through years of blackouts, and they were sick of a regime that sits on billions, while its people starve, noted U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz in a speech to the UN General Assembly.
But instead of listening to cries of its people, the Cuban communist regime chose to imprison 800 of its citizens.
Among them is Fernando Almenares Rivera, a rapper, who was sentenced January 2026 to five years in prison for publicly displaying banners with slogans critical of those in power in Havana, including “Cuba First in the Streets for Human Rights.”
Maykel Castillo Perez is a Cuban musician and prisoner of conscience who has faced constant harassment and arbitrary detentions. In June 2022, he was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Duannis Dabel León Taboada, a young poet, was convicted of sedition in May 2022 and sentenced to 14 years in a maximum security prison.
Brothers, Jorge Martín and Nadir Martín Perdomo, were sentenced in February 2022 to 6 and 8 years in prison respectively for demanding their freedoms during the July 2021 protests.
These dissidents were not armed. They were not violent. They wrote poems and music, noted Ambassador Waltz. And for that, the regime beat them, detained them, and tried to break them.
For 67 years, the Cuban regime has enriched itself, its ruling elites, while abusing its people, strangling private enterprise, criminalizing dissent, and clinging to failed communist economics.
It is no wonder that nearly two million Cubans have risked their lives and fled, observed Ambassador Waltz. “And where did they flee? They often go to the United States. We have now three million Cuban Americans, who are proudly thriving as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as lawyers, as doctors, as members of their communities—even our own Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American who has risen through our society to represent the United States on the world stage.”
“The world should not help the Cuban regime hide its incompetence, and its malice, and its corruption, and its greed,” declared Ambassador Waltz. “We should help the Cuban people break free, realize the freedoms that the Cuban people have dreamt of for so long.”
“I stand with the Cuban people,” declared Ambassador Waltz. “President Trump stands with the Cuban people. Secretary Marco Rubio, a proud Cuban-American, stands with the Cuban people. We call on the regime to release these political prisoners, to allow real economic freedom, and give the Cuban people the very rights that [the United Nations] claims to defend.”