Following protests at several Cuban universities against the sharp rise in Internet prices, students have come forward with reports of institutional repression and intimidation aimed at preventing them from joining an academic strike. What has recently come to light aligns with the Cuban authoritarian regime’s usual strategies to discourage or suppress any expressions of dissent and the exercise of fundamental rights.

Students from at least 25 university faculties in Cuba published statements criticizing the new Internet rates imposed by the Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa), which holds a monopoly on the service in the country. This is one of the broadest and most visible student mobilizations the island has seen in decades.

Although their petitions and complaints are legitimate and aimed at defending their access to information and essential educational resources, which are key to exercising fundamental rights like freedom of expression, several government officials and leaders of the pro-government University Student Federation (FEU) have dismissed the students’ demands. Political police have also threatened several of the students involved in statements against the rate hike, according to social media reports and testimonies shared with El Toque.

Reports of Surveillance and Punishment at Cuban Universities

Young people, whose identities are protected to avoid retaliation, told El Toque what they experienced at their institutions last week after the new rates were announced and students reacted negatively. At two universities in different provinces and academic fields, the sentiment was the same: the measure is unjust not only for students but for society as a whole. But they also agree that fear is the authorities’ main tactic to demobilize them and deter them from joining the academic strike or other protest actions.

“The Music, Famca [Faculty of Audiovisual Media Arts], and Theater Arts faculties have released statements against the Internet prices (…). In my faculty, no statement has come out because the dean’s office has us repressed, there’s no unity, and the FEU president doesn’t support us,” said a student at ISA—the University of the Arts in Havana.

According to the student, many are frightened, and she specified: “since the day [when the rate hike was announced], we’ve been under surveillance, and the university rectorate has been analyzing people just for posting opinions online. There’s a lot of surveillance here and State Security agents are walking around the campus.”

From Matanzas, a medical sciences student told El Toque: “The authorities are meeting with students, but very selectively, they don’t call a general meeting. They go to groups or classrooms with just a few students, mostly first-year med students, to speak to them and scare them, trying to discourage them.”

The student explained that they oppose “the rate hike and other general issues affecting society”; and added: “We want people to be aware of the discontent, and students in Matanzas are not being left behind, though fear is real.”

On Sunday, June 8, 2025, the Academic Freedom Observatory issued a warning on social media about “a repressive offensive by State Security against students at the Jose Antonio Echeverría Technological University of Havana (Cujae) and the Marta Abreu Central University of Las Villas (UCLV).”

According to the Observatorio de Libertad Académica, “plainclothes agents have appeared at the campuses of both universities and have been interrogating several students for hours. They have also gone to the homes of those identified as leaders who aren’t in the university dorms, threatening them with expulsion in an intimidation campaign that also targets their families.”

The group also noted in its post that the WhatsApp channels through which these university communities stayed connected and coordinated their protest activities have been shut down.

That appears to be the case with the “Cujae habla” channel—an alternative communication space created amid the protests against the new prices. It was abruptly shut down on June 7, 2025, after reporting summonses from Interior Ministry agents over an allegedly subversive poster.

El Toque was also able to independently verify—based on testimony from four students—what has been happening at Central University of Las Villas. According to the students, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the political police showed up at the homes of at least three students and threatened them with expulsion from their degree programs and potential criminal charges.

These accounts align with a report obtained by journalist Mario Penton, which stated that one of the students harassed by State Security “was the administrator of the WhatsApp channel La voz de todos [The Voice of All], which aimed to unite university students and already had more than 500 followers within hours. A student protest was being planned for Monday, but he was forced to shut down the channel.”

Other students from the University of the Arts (ISA) have also come forward with complaints about institutional harassment at the school. Martí Noticias obtained a testimony from an audio visual faculty (Famca) student who participated in a protest and was pressured for speaking out.

“It seems the dean and the rector learned we were the first faculty at ISA to issue a statement against Etecsa. Other universities had already been doing it. As a result, scholarship students were taken from their rooms at ten at night and brought to the ISA rector’s office,” the student recounted.

According to him: “They held a meeting where they said they were very disappointed that we had issued that statement, asked what our intentions were, and said they were going to sue us for illegally using our university’s logo on a statement they hadn’t approved or released.”

In that meeting, the university authorities “tried to downplay the situation” by saying they had done it just because other universities had too. They also argued that “before the Internet, we still had cinema” and used FEU representatives to promote the official version in classrooms and neutralize student discontent.

In an audio leaked to our outlet, a student from the Faculty of Foreign Languages (FLEX) at the University of Havana can be heard denouncing: “FEU national, FEU UH, and the university’s administration are violating our right [to strike].”

“Do we have to align ourselves complicitly with the violation of legitimate rights?” The student also alleged that university authorities are trying to portray the more radical students as the result of “external influence,” a rhetoric the Cuban regime has used in other protest contexts, such as the events of July 2021.

It was also reported that the dean of the Faculty of Communication and Letters at the University of Holguín (UHO) summoned a fourth-year journalism student after a statement was published by students from that faculty opposing Etecsa’s rate hikes.

Students at the Medical School in Cienfuegos also told El Toque that after a protest over extended blackouts and public statements against Etecsa’s price hike, several students were threatened by State Security with the complicity of professors at their educational institution. Some were forced to delete videos of the protest that took place in the student residence. In addition, images circulated of a person on campus trying to intimidate students while shouting the official slogan: “homeland or death.”

The Public Threat from the Communist Party

Amid the impact of the student statements, the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) published the following phrase from Fidel Castro (1959) on its social media accounts:

“And remember this—remember what history teaches us: that revolutionary processes have no middle ground. They either triumph completely or are defeated. History shows that one goes from extreme revolution to extreme reaction. And of course, among the defeated, rest assured, we will not be counted.”

Commenting on the post, Cuban academic and historian Dr. Alina Barbara Lopez stated:

“Subtlety is not a virtue of the single party. From the stratosphere in which it resides, it feels the absolute power it once enjoyed is under threat—and it threatens us.”

The former university professor added:

“They appeal to the principle of authority, which for them is a quote from Fidel Castro. It would be good to remind them of the speech he gave in 2005 at the University of Havana, where he said the revolution could only be defeated from within. Well, that’s exactly where we are. You are to blame—your exclusion, corruption, and arrogance. Without our fear, you no longer hold power. History teaches that too.”

Institutional repression in Cuba is not an isolated or sporadic phenomenon, but rather a systematic strategy designed to crush any form of dissent that might threaten the regime’s stability. In this context, the Cuban state’s repressive apparatus has deployed its full force—via State Security and government officials—to intimidate students, the social sector that has responded most strongly to Etecsa’s price hike.

Repression in Cuba follows a systematic logic, not isolated incidents. What students face today is part of the continuous repressive framework that has spanned decades of state control. Instead of addressing students’ legitimate demands for access to a basic service like the Internet, authorities have chosen to intensify fear through persecution.

This direct attack on university autonomy is also a reminder of the ways in which the Cuban system has, for decades, maintained a social control apparatus that stifles any attempt at change. Universities, which have the potential to be spaces of free thought and dissent, have become centers of constant surveillance.

This article was translated into English from the original in Spanish.