Havana (AFP) – Cuban journalist Yoani Sanchez denounced on Friday the “threats” and “pressure” of the political police against her, the day after her arrest for a few hours in Havana.

Published on: 06/11/2026 - 19:48

“They want me to shut up, they want me to go away,” denounced on social networks this figure of independent journalism in Cuba, arrested Thursday morning in the middle of the street in the capital, then released in the early evening.

A little later, she denounced the presence of police officers "at the bottom of my building" to "prevent her from leaving" her home.

Another independent journalist, Camila Acosta, as well as the young dissident Anna Sofia Benitez also claimed, on the social network

Anna Sofia Benitez and her mother were sentenced in October to two years of “limitation of freedom”, which means that they cannot leave the country, for having filmed and broadcast on social networks an agent who came to give them a police summons.

In addition to Yoani Sanchez, dissident Berta Soler, 63, leader of the Ladies in White movement, was detained for several hours on Thursday, before also being released early in the evening. Another member of the collective was also briefly arrested.

"Propaganda"

Yoani Sanchez, 51, explained Friday, in a video message posted on YouTube, that she was arrested by "three individuals dressed in civilian clothes" from State Security who did not identify themselves, then taken to a police station in the Cerro, a Havana district.

The journalist, who founded the online daily 14ymedio which she directs in 2014, said she was accused of "several counts, including that of 'propaganda against the constitutional order'". “This obviously has to do with my work,” she added.

“They want me to turn off my microphone, but I’m not going to turn it off,” she continued, saying she wanted to use it on Friday to resume her work as a journalist and “tell what I saw in this dungeon.”

"I noticed with horror that dozens, even hundreds of Cubans are arrested every day in Havana because they do not have an address in the capital on their identity card. They are called 'illegals' and they are expelled to their provinces," she denounced.

Yoani Sanchez won the Ortega y Gasset Prize in 2008, one of the most important distinctions for journalism in Spanish. The same year, she was included in the ranking of the 100 most influential people in the world by the American magazine Time.

His online newspaper, critical of government management, regularly denounces the censorship and harassment exercised by the authorities against opponents and independent journalists.

According to a law passed in 2023, state media, controlled by the Communist Party, are the only ones authorized on the island.

However, several independent online media have emerged in recent years and are surviving as best they can in a legal vacuum. Cubans access it through a virtual private network (VPN).

In the 2026 world press freedom ranking published by the NGO Reporters Without Borders, Cuba occupies 160th place out of 180 countries.

© 2026 AFP

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