Prison or Exile: Cuba’s Ultimatum to Journalist Austin Llerandi

A State Security officer gave the director of Amanecer Habanero two months to leave Cuba or face prison for practicing independent journalism

On August 21, 2026, Cuban journalist Austin Llerandi was summoned to a police station in Marianao, Havana, and interrogated for five hours. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a State Security officer told him that he had two months to leave the country. If he remained in Cuba and continued his work, he could be sent to prison. The ultimatum transforms journalism itself into an alleged offence and turns exile into an instrument of punishment.

Llerandi, 36, directs and edits Amanecer Habanero, an independent community newsletter reporting on daily life in Havana. The publication belongs to the network of the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press, known as ICLEP, which has supported local non-state news bulletins since 2012. Its journalism records the concerns, shortages and experiences of communities that are often absent from official media.

The August interrogation was not an isolated episode. Llerandi has been repeatedly detained and questioned for exercising freedom of expression and practicing journalism. On July 14, State Security officers had already threatened him with imprisonment over the publication of the newsletter. The new deadline intensifies that pressure: the authorities are no longer merely demanding silence, but trying to remove the journalist from the country in which his reporting is rooted.

The investigation invokes Decree 370, which restricts the circulation of information through media not authorized by the state. Its use against independent reporters exposes a profound contradiction. Articles 54 and 55 of the 2019 Constitution of Cuba formally recognize freedom of thought, expression and the press, while the legal and institutional system preserves extensive state control over media activity. Rights written into a constitution lose their meaning when those who exercise them are threatened with prison.

Forced exile is not a neutral alternative to incarceration. A journalist’s work depends on proximity: to people, neighborhoods, sources, language and memory. Removing a reporter from that environment interrupts the relationships that make local journalism possible. The threat directed at Llerandi is therefore also directed at the readers of Amanecer Habanero and at their right to receive information about their own society.

José Zamora, Regional Director for the Americas at the Committee to Protect Journalists, condemned the ultimatum and called on Cuban authorities to end the harassment. No reporter should be forced to choose between prison and exile for doing their job. Llerandi, for his part, has said that he intends to remain true to himself and continue the journalism in which he believes.

The case belongs to a wider geography of pressure against reporters. ChannelDraw has documented the faces and stories of imprisoned media workers in Faces of Journalism Under Detention, as well as the way the accusation of terrorism can be used to criminalize drawing and reporting in Ten Years Later: When a Drawing Became Terrorism. Different legal systems and political contexts produce different forms of repression, but the objective is often the same: to isolate journalists, intimidate their colleagues and make independent information more difficult to obtain.

Even in democratic countries, actions against reporters can create a chilling effect, as the ChannelDraw account of the FBI raid on journalist Hannah Natanson’s home shows. Llerandi’s case is more direct and brutal: the state has presented the continued practice of journalism as grounds for imprisonment and departure from Cuba as the only permitted escape.

The demand that Austin Llerandi leave his country must be understood for what it is: an attempt to erase a journalistic voice from the place where it matters most. Defending his right to remain and report means defending more than one person’s profession. It means defending the public’s right to know, the survival of independent community media and the principle that telling the truth about everyday life is not a crime.

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