Yoeni de Jesús Guerra García

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Yoeni de Jesús Guerra García is an independent Cuban journalist and human-rights activist. He works with the Council of Cuban Human Rights Rapporteurs and the Círculos Democráticos Municipalistas. He lives in Arroyo Blanco, Jatibonico, Sancti Spíritus, and in 2014 he was 36 years old. He writes for Boletín Voz Avileña and the Yayabo Press and is known for his work promoting democracy and human rights.

He was arrested at his home in October 2013 in what authorities described as a violent and arbitrary seizure. He faced charges of theft and slaughter of livestock that could carry up to 20 years in prison. While in Nieves Morejón prison in Sancti Spíritus, he was subject to serious abuses, including alleged beatings and a rape inside the prison, and reports that his food was drugged. Prison officials were accused of ordering these actions, according to information from inmates.

Guerra García’s sister, Yalena, said he wrote a long account of the rape and hid it in dirty socks given to their mother; the document was later confiscated by the political police. Reports say that on the night of November 16 guards forced him to stand with his arms tied to the cell bars and then severely beat him, injuring his head, back, and arms and sending him to the infirmary. He was later held in a psychiatric hospital, tied to a bed and sedated, and he is said to have attempted suicide.

A March 2014 visit by a reporter described him as visibly shaken. Guerra García told the reporter that the charges were false and made by state security because of his writing; he called the authorities Nazis and said they had driven him crazy.

In November 2013, the Council of Cuban Human Rights Rapporteurs condemned his arrest and abuse as barbaric. The case drew international attention, with a 2015 letter from Reporters Without Borders urging Cuba’s president to secure his immediate release, along with two other Cuban journalists.