«Written by Luis A. Cabrera, OSINT Analyst»
NINE OBSESSIVE ATTEMPTS: THE CENSORSHIP PATTERN THREATENING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
When Abinader approves something he knows is unconstitutional and then tells the people to go to the Constitutional Court, that is deliberate constitutional fraud.
The people know that courts take years to rule. While the court decides, the law takes effect.
A bulletproof Constitution?
What was the point of bulletproofing the Constitution only to violate it on something as fundamental as freedom of expression? That reveals it was done out of ego, not principle.
In the digital age, freedom fits in the palm of a hand. A tweet can start a revolution. A video can bring down a government. But when traditional power feels cornered, the response is not rebuttal. It is silence.
For the Dominican traditional press, until recently, Luis Abinader presented himself as the face of Caribbean modernity. A consensus leader. But behind that smoke screen and the tailored suits, there is an ideological affiliation that many prefer to ignore.
When Abinader was invited to the Shield of the Americas Forum, he did not attend as a neutral observer. He attended in his subtle but firm capacity as president of the socialist left, something everyone knew perfectly well, like the Last Supper.
The socialist left no longer wears military uniforms or picks up arms. Twenty-first century socialism operates with a small book of precision policies. It is not a trend, not a label to sound cool or progressive to the youth. It is a script designed for permanence in power.
The playbook is clear. In Latin America, the left has understood that to control the present, it must control the narrative. With traditional media weighed down by state subsidies or regulatory pressure, dissent found one last refuge: social media.
Social media became the headquarters of the right and of civic opposition. The place to speak, organize, and denounce.
If your political adversary organizes on the networks, your strategic objective is to shut the networks down. How do you do that in 2026 without looking like a classic dictator? You do not close the internet. You judicialize opinion. You create laws.
The epicenter of the controversy: Law 74-25.
Under the argument of protecting institutional order and combating disinformation, the Abinader government introduced a series of perverse articles that, according to critics, seek to legalize censorship in the Dominican Republic.
We are talking about criminalizing thought. About transforming dissent into a public order offense. Where prosecutors will have a green light to crush anyone who reports, disagrees, or complains about a public official.
If a citizen questions a state policy on social media and that is classified as a threat or defamation under the government's new framework, the response is not a fine. It is prison.
The paradox is that this legal offensive moves in the opposite direction from the global trend in Western democracies. While the Dominican Constitutional Court itself, international human rights courts, and even powers like the United States have advanced toward decriminalizing opinion offenses, the Dominican government decides to turn back the biological clock of freedom of expression and thought.
The world says that speech is countered with speech, not with prison bars. But the survival manual of this authoritarian left needs fear. They need you to think twice before you click.
The Dominican Republic stands at a historic crossroads. Between the promise of an open democracy and the quiet implementation of an authoritarian script designed to punish the dissident and silence voices online.
Law 74-25 is already on the table. The question is no longer what the government is hiding. It is who will be the first to be set up.
Since 2022, the government of President Luis Abinader has attempted, on nine separate occasions, to restrict freedom of expression in the Dominican Republic. Not once. Not twice. Nine times. Three attempts per year, for three consecutive years.
That figure alone, without embellishment, says a great deal about the direction this country is heading. A strategy of legal attrition, where the gag law finally got through.
The first attempt came in May 2022 with the Law on Intimacy and Honor. Two months later, in June, the Cybersecurity Law followed. August brought the State Advertising Law. December closed that year with the DNI Law.
In November 2024, the Law on Self-Regulation of Media and Content Creators appeared. Added to those were the Freedom of Expression Law, the Hate Speech Law, the Law Against Artificial Intelligence, and, finally, the new Code of Criminal Procedure.
Each of those bills failed or generated backlash. The government, however, did not give up. On the contrary, it seized the opportunity of the Penal Code reform to insert, almost silently, eleven articles that, if enforced, would turn ordinary civic criticism into a crime punishable by imprisonment.
That censorship law was born alongside a 615-million-dollar loan that was approved the same night Luis Abinader gave birth to his new penal code.
THE ABINADER CODE
The eleven articles incorporated into the new Penal Code cover an extraordinarily broad range of everyday expression. Below is what each one means in practice:
Article 186: Violation of privacy. This was precisely the first measure the government attempted to pass as a standalone law in May 2022. Three years later, it reappeared camouflaged inside the code.
Article 192: Distribution of audio or images without consent. Under this article, publishing a video or audio recording of a public official without prior authorization could result in two to ten years in prison. A public official paid with taxpayer money would have the authority to decide whether citizens can or cannot see what he does.
Article 208 defines defamation as the public attribution to a natural or legal person of a specific act that affects their honor, dignity, image, reputation, or family integrity. The provision establishes penalties of two to five years in prison and fines of nine to fifteen public sector minimum wages when the conduct is carried out through any means of dissemination.
And the worst part: it does not matter if the statement is true.
On defamation and libel: In the United States and in most Western democracies, defamation is not a criminal offense. It is handled through civil courts. The reasoning is straightforward: criminalizing speech chills public debate and shields those in power from scrutiny. In the Dominican Republic, this article threatens penalties of two to ten years, comparable to sentences for crimes that cause actual physical harm.
Article 299: Price manipulation. Perhaps the most absurd of all. If a citizen posts on social media that things are expensive and the government decides that complaint contributed to a merchant raising prices, that citizen could face six months to one year in prison. Criticizing the cost of living is, under this article, a potential crime.
Article 310: Outrage. This article penalizes uttering words, making gestures, or sending messages deemed offensive toward a public official, even inside the privacy of one's home. Not in public. In private. When asked about it, the president played dumb and admitted he had not read it after the code was promulgated under his name, in his own hand.
The president does not read what he signs? That answer raises an unavoidable question: if he did not read it beforehand, who wrote it?
Article 173: Discrimination. People who criticize irregular immigration could be exposed under this article, as their expressions might be classified as hate speech. Penalties range from one to ten years. There are rumors that this article was introduced to protect the Lebanese diaspora, which had been facing significant criticism for its alleged ties to Hezbollah.
Article 80: Discrimination committed against a public official. A citizen who addresses an official using an ethnic or national reference, even in colloquial language, could face one to ten years in prison.
Article 309: Threats. Most notable here is the inclusion of what the code calls threat of defamation. If someone tells an official I am going to reveal what you did at that institution, that statement can be interpreted as a threat and result in penalties of up to ten years. Denouncing corruption could, under this article, become a criminal act.
Articles on harassment and intimidation: If a journalist or communicator produces multiple videos criticizing the same official, the code would allow that official to accuse them of bullying or harassment. In practice, this destroys the possibility of sustained investigative coverage on matters of public interest.
"I READ IT AFTER THE CODE"
When journalist Judith Febles asked President Abinader about Article 310, regarding the offense of outrage, the response was disquieting:
"I know it was something very fast. I don't know if you noticed or what happened. I read it after the code."
The president of the Republic admitted, on camera, that he had not read his own penal code before it was promulgated under his name and signature. Eleven articles that violate freedom of expression passed, by his own account, without his knowledge.
Yet when asked about the prescription of corruption offenses, set at twenty years under that same code, he showed considerably more ease and clarity in defending that provision.
The contrast is telling. On the prescription of crimes committed by officials, the president is firm and prepared. On the articles that silence ordinary citizens, he claims ignorance.
The president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Henry Molina, reported that 34,000 cases reach the justice system every year, of which only 24 percent are resolved. Moreover, 15,000 people remain in pretrial detention without their cases having been investigated. The system, in his own words, has collapsed. Luis Abinader intends to suffocate that same system with tens of thousands of additional cases for opinion crimes. That is not reform. It is deliberate overload.
THE SURVEILLANCE THAT WAS NORMALIZED
The Pegasus program, according to reports, enables the Dominican government to simultaneously surveil up to 50,000 people. That capability takes on a new and sinister dimension when combined with Article 310, which penalizes outrage even in private.
The question that follows is logical: how would the government know that someone insulted an official inside their own home? The answer, which no one in power rushes to provide, points directly to electronic surveillance.
When Luis Abinader assumed the presidency, he posted on his Twitter account that attorney Luis Soto would lead the National Department of Investigations as the first civilian lawyer to protect state security while respecting the privacy of citizens and respecting the law. That promise and the reality on the ground are difficult to reconcile.
Luis Abinader has created the perfect environment for impunity. So much so that Gregory Adames, a star witness in the Jet Set case, noted that most platforms in the Dominican Republic are silent.
"It is shameful to see that here everyone is quiet, practically everyone is quiet."
While the media stays silent, those who speak out are independent digital communicators. The political opposition has chosen to wait until election season to reactivate itself. That absence has real consequences. The void is not being filled by political parties but by individuals who, with far fewer resources and far greater exposure to risk, decide to speak anyway.
THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT BEING IGNORED
At the moment when Senator Ben Cardin pointed out that there is specific concern not only about what is happening in Haiti, but about the genuine commitment of the Abinader government to combating corruption, the Dominican Republic was already on Washington's radar. Cardin also noted that a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act requires concrete anti-corruption strategies from allied nations.
The Dominican Republic appears on that radar. And while it appears on that radar, its government is working to ensure that citizens cannot speak freely about what is happening inside their own borders.
WHAT IS NOT CRIMINALIZED IN THE UNITED STATES
It is worth stating clearly, because the comparison matters. In the United States:
Defamation is not a criminal offense. It is resolved in civil courts. Complaining about prices on social media carries no legal consequence. Criticizing a public official, even harshly, is protected by the First Amendment. A nickname or a joke about a politician is, in practice, protected speech. Producing multiple videos criticizing the same person does not constitute criminal harassment.
The Dominican Republic is not the United States. But if it aspires to be a comparable democracy, it is fair to ask why its laws are moving in the opposite direction.
THE RIGHT SPARK
Three times a year, for three years, Luis Abinader has attempted to restrict what Dominicans can say, publish, comment, or report. Nine bills failed. The idea, however, did not die. It simply changed vehicles and arrived inside the Penal Code.
Eleven articles. Each one capable of sending a person to prison for speaking. For complaining. For criticizing. For reminding a public official that he works for the people.
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Luis A. Cabrera
OSINT ANALYST
