Cuban Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara Said to Be Held in Isolation
Dissident Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a frontrunner of the activist San Isidro Motion (MSI), is reportedly being detained in an isolation cell at Guanajay, a maximum-security jail roughly thirty-five miles southwest of Havana, “with out the potential for seeing the solar.” In keeping with an August 16 publish on Otero Alcántara’s Twitter account, he’s struggling cramps in his palms and toes, and his well being is declining. The identical account revealed on August 5 that he had been attacked by a fellow prisoner; the digital information outlet Cibercuba reported that Otero Alcántara had been in an isolation cell earlier this summer time as punishment for a starvation strike he was staging to protest his remedy. After giving up the hassle owing to poor well being, he was built-in into the final inhabitants; he was moved again into isolation following the assault. Otero Alcántara has moreover been ailing with dengue fever, as have many different prisoners there.
The artist has been in custody at Guanajay since July 2021, when was detained by authorities whereas on his approach to one of many historic demonstrations that roiled Havana final summer time. He was illegally detained for practically a yr with no listening to earlier than being sentenced to 5 years in jail following a sequence of closed-door trials in Havana this previous June. Cuban legislation states that an individual can’t be held for greater than six months with out receiving a trial: Guanajay remained incarcerated for seven months earlier than being issued a courtroom date.
Named one in all Time’s Most Influential Folks of 2021 the identical month he was arrested, Otero Alcántara had already been forcibly hospitalized in Havana in Could 2021, greater than every week after a starvation strike, which he reportedly undertook on April 26 to protest the federal government’s seizure or destruction of a number of of his artworks that spring. His July 2021 arrest, which drew worldwide condemnation, was the newest in a sequence of unlawful detentions he has endured since Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel rose to energy in 2018. Below Díaz-Canel’s regime, artists and others protesting authorities censorship have been for years topic to state harassment.
