A Cuban national and her two minor daughters requested international protection in Croatia, claiming persecution due to her criticism of the Cuban regime, political posts on Facebook, and threats and coercion from authorities. She stated that she left Cuba due to corruption, police aggression and the fact that on 11 July 2021, there was a protest in which she did not participate in person, but she supported the protest participants via social media. She also noted the lack of food, poor living conditions and a poor economic situation in Cuba. She stated that, because of her political posts in Facebook, she had problems and received threats from the Cuban authorities. She also claimed that the products sold in her café were illegally confiscated by the authorities. She alleged that she had faced intimidation by police and administrative harassment by tax inspectors. She argued that her social media activity made her a dissident, that she had lost her Cuban citizenship by leaving the country, and that she and her daughters belonged to a vulnerable group under Article 4(14) of the Act on International and Temporary Protection.   

On 11 February 2025, the Ministry of the Interior rejected the application for refugee status and subsidiary protection, concluding that she had not demonstrated a real risk of persecution or serious harm. The applicant appealed. 

The Administrative Court in Zagreb held an oral hearing but did not hear the applicant, as her attorney withdrew the proposal after learning from the Red Cross that she had left Croatia. He had no information about her address, nor was he in contact with her. The court reviewed the case file and country of origin information (COI). It noted that her Facebook links were inaccessible and that she had shared other people’s posts rather than creating original content. The court cited a report from Human Rights Watch according to which the authorities, as in previous years, arbitrarily imprisoned, harassed and intimidated critics, independent activists and political opponents. The court also acknowledged that the 2013 reform related to travel to and from Cuba gave the Cuban Government broad discretion to restrict travel abroad for the purposes of ‘defense and national security’ or ‘other reasons of public interest’. According to the court, the fact that the applicant left Cuba legally with her own passport and faced no problems when leaving, demonstrated that she was not placed on the list of persons ‘unsuitable for the regime’. Besides, the court noted that from the protests that took place until the day she left her country, the behavior of the authorities according to the applicant resulted in the blocking of social networks and the arrival of tax inspectors at her café. The court ruled that such actions do not indicate that the applicant would be a threat to the defense and national security or the public interest, since the blocking of social networks applied to the entire Republic of Cuba, while the arrival of tax inspectors did not have consequences for her that would lead to the applicant’s imprisonment, harassment or intimidation, as was the case with persons who are critics, independent activists, or other opponents of the government. It concluded that she was neither a critic nor a human rights activist, and that she was not politically active enough to have personally experienced problems due to the alleged social media posts. Furthermore, the court relied on ACLED data showing in the period from January 2024 to January 2025 fewer than 5 deaths per month from security incidents in Cuba. Given that the Cuban population is of 11.2 million, the court held that the security risk was almost non-existent. 

The court concluded that she had not demonstrated persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a particular social group under Article 20 of the Act on International and Temporary Protection, nor will face the threat of the death penalty or execution, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and a serious individual threat due to arbitrary general violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict upon returning to Cuba under Article 21 of the Act on International and Temporary Protection. 

The court found that the Ministry of the Interior had correctly applied substantive and procedural law, that the applicant’s account was not credible, and that the contested decision was lawful. The claim was dismissed as unfounded, and the Ministry of the Interior’s decision was upheld.