Influential Cuban dissident says his fight against government will continue off the island

MIAMI (AP) — Influential Cuban dissident leader José Daniel Ferrer, recently exiled from Cuba, says that the island’s fractured and weakened opposition movements need to shift strategies and oppose the government from outside the Caribbean nation.

The comments from Ferrer, in an interview with The Associated Press, come after he spent years in prison in Cuba where he believed he could fuel a larger fight against the government. “Being a prisoner turned me into a symbol of resistance,” he told the AP in Miami.

Now, although he would prefer to be in Cuba, he said he believes he and other exiles must build a strategy outside of the island.

Ferrer said he was forced to leave his country because of the continuing government crackdown on critics triggered by mass anti-government protests that broke out in 2021. It has fueled an exodus of civil society representatives, activists and journalists, weakening groups who oppose the government.

Ferrer arrived in Miami earlier this month on a flight from Cuba with family and U.S. officials.

“The only way to stay in contact with my activists scattered across the island … the only way to help relieve people of their hunger and lack of resources so many people face is to leave the country,” he said. “That’s how we can turn into a political force that’s actually effective.”

Mounting crackdown and geopolitical tensions

Cuba’s government remains locked in a decades-long geopolitical feud with the U.S. government and has been economically crippled by U.S. sanctions.

President Donald Trump has reinstated hardline policies toward Havana, toughening sanctions and reinstating a ban on American tourism to the communist island. Such measures have been criticized as disproportionately affecting the people of Cuba rather than the government that the Trump administration hopes to combat.

As leader of a dissident movement in his home city of Santiago de Cuba, Ferrer had been in and out of prison in recent decades.

Most recently, Ferrer was convicted of violating house arrest — something often imposed on dissident figures — to protest during mass-demonstrations in 2021. Ferrer has denied the charges.

While human rights groups and the U.S. government have in the past described Ferrer as a political prisoner, Cuba’s government denies holding any political prisoners.

Ferrer said that during his detention he was tortured — including beatings and being force-fed rotten meat through a tube — in what he described as an effort by Cuban authorities to force him to leave the island.

He said that Cuban officials also pressured him to reach out to the U.S. Embassy and the Catholic Church in hopes of facilitating a deal for Cuba to release prisoners in exchange for an easing of sanctions. Ferrer said he refused to do that.

Cuba’s government did not respond to a request for comment about allegations of torture or pressuring Ferrer to seek negotiations with the Trump administration. It did publicly acknowledge that Ferrer was released following a formal request by American authorities, and previously has denied that Ferrer was tortured.

‘Leaving the country was my only option’

Ferrer said that for years he refused to leave the island because his imprisonment made him a kind of martyr who motivated other Cubans to oppose the government.

But in recent years, particularly in the wake of the 2021 protests, Ferrer said it’s been harder to organize on the island, and that the government has gone after his family, including threatening to arrest his partner. The ongoing crackdown and exodus of opposition figures has had what Ferrer described as a chilling effect.

“Leaving the country was my only option,” he said, noting he hopes to return someday.

In December, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned what it called “growing repression in Cuba against opponents and dissidents” including targeting journalists, activists and political opponents. The commission said the Cuban government used internet shutdowns, house arrests, surveillance, detentions, fines and interrogations to go after opponents.

Ferrer has been given a number of concessions not usually afforded to dissidents, such as leaving the country with his family, including the mother of one of his daughters.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it did not negotiate with the Cuban government for Ferrer’s release, though it did publicly acknowledge that Ferrer was released following a formal request by American authorities.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, celebrated Ferrer’s release earlier this month, and called on the Cuban government to release other imprisoned opponents.

“Ferrer’s leadership and tireless advocacy for the Cuban people was a threat to the regime, which repeatedly imprisoned and tortured him. We are glad that Ferrer is now free from the regime’s oppression,” Rubio wrote in a statement.

The pathway for the Cuban opposition remains unclear as the country continues to be roiled by the economic and energy crises but with fewer voices to raise alarm about frustrations.

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AP reporter Andrea Rodríguez contributed from Havana.