In the wake of historic protests in July, Cuban authorities imprisoned many hundreds of protesters, almost 700 of whom remained in prison at the end of the year. The authorities ramped up their machinery of control over freedom of expression and assembly with physical surveillance of human rights activists, artists and journalists, and by subjecting them to house arrest, arbitrary detention, violations of due process and, in some cases, ill-treatment, while also disrupting the internet. The economic situation continued to deteriorate and the US authorities again failed to lift the economic embargo.
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