Havana (AFP) – Yoani Sánchez, one of the best-known figures of independent journalism in Cuba, and the leader of the Ladies in White movement, Berta Soler, were arrested this Thursday in Havana.

First modification: 06/11/2026 - 00:23

Several organizations defending human rights and press freedom denounced this new repressive episode on the communist island.

Sánchez, 51, was "kidnapped by the political police" in the morning, when she was leaving her home in the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood "to go shopping," reported the digital newspaper 14ymedio, which she founded and has directed since 2014.

"We still have no news from Yoani Sánchez," her husband, also independent journalist Reinaldo Escobar, wrote on Facebook after noon.

Likewise, Soler's husband, also a dissident Ángel Moya, confirmed to AFP that she and María Cristina Labrada, another member of the Ladies in White, "were detained in the middle of the street when they both left the house," which serves as the headquarters of the opposition movement.

"We don't know where they took them," Moya added.

The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, an NGO based in Spain, demanded in X "immediate information on the whereabouts of Soler and Labrada."

Soler, 63, whose organization was awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights by the European Parliament in 2005, has suffered frequent brief arrests and house confinement for his activism.

The movement emerged in 2003, after the imprisonment of 75 Cuban opponents in a wave of repression known as the "black spring." Its members wear white as a symbol of peaceful protest.

"Cessation of persecution"

Sánchez won the Ortega y Gasset Prize in 2008, one of the main awards in journalism in Spanish, and was included that same year by the American magazine Time among the 100 most influential people in the world.

In his diary he regularly criticizes government management and denounces the authorities' censorship and harassment of opponents.

Like other independent journalists in Cuba, Sánchez suffers frequent harassment by the political police, who often prevent them from leaving their homes to cover events of special relevance or subject them to temporary arrests.

The NGO Reporters Without Borders condemned in X the detention of Sánchez and demanded "his immediate release, guarantees for his safety and the cessation of the persecution against independent journalism."

On that same social network, Amnesty International (AI) criticized Sánchez's arrest and the "imprisonment" of Henry Constantín, another communicator detained in Camagüey (center-east) since mid-September.

Constantín directs La Hora de Cuba, a small independent media, and is accused of "disobedience."

"We demand that the Cuban authorities immediately and unconditionally release all people they are detaining solely for exercising their freedom of expression and guarantee the right to report without reprisals," Amnesty added.

According to a law passed in 2023, the only legal media outlets in Cuba are state-run media, controlled by the Communist Party that governs the country.

However, in the last decade independent online media emerged, which survive in a legal vacuum and which Cubans access through virtual private networks (VPN).

14ymedio highlighted that several collaborators from opposition media have been detained in public in recent weeks and then released, although with fines or warnings.

© 2026 AFP

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