Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara Protests Inhumane Conditions in Guanajay – RisePEI
New studies on the situation of Cuban artist and political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who has been held on the maximum-security jail Guanajay for greater than a yr, have reignited requires his launch on-line. On August 16, his Twitter account shared that he was confined in a punishment cell “with out the opportunity of seeing the solar.”
“The cramps within the arms and toes persist. His well being continues to undergo,” his Twitter account wrote, citing a cellphone name Otero Alcántara constructed from the jail.
Otero Alcántara, a pacesetter of the San Isidro protest motion, was sentenced to five years in prison in June following closed-door trials within the Cuban capital of Havana. His sentencing continues to attract worldwide condemnation from human rights teams, who accuse the Cuban authorities of retaliation towards the artist for his involvement in demonstrations over the falling normal of life within the nation.
On August 5, his Twitter account shared studies from Otero Alcántara that he had been assaulted by a fellow prisoner. Based on the web outlet Cibercuba, Otero Alcántara was transferred to an isolation cell. Together with different prisoners, he has reportedly suffered from dengue, a mosquito-borne viral an infection which causes fevers and rashes.
Earlier this yr, the artist waged a starvation and thirst strike to protest his indefinite detainment. Few updates from the jail got to his household and buddies in regards to the state of his well being.
Otero Alcántara, a vocal defender of creative freedom in Cuba who was named one in all Time’s Most Influential Individuals of 2021, was arrested in July of that yr whereas en path to an illustration in Havana. He was transferred to jail and remained in detention for greater than seven months with out receiving a courtroom date. Cuban regulation states that an individual can’t be detained for greater than six months with out receiving a trial.
The artist has been arrested quite a few occasions for the reason that starting of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s regime in 2018. His arrest in 2021 drew renewed worldwide consideration because it got here throughout historic mass protests on the island that noticed quite a few artists, activists, and journalists arrested on doubtful expenses.
Otero Alcántara stood trial with musician Maykel Castillo Pérez, whose tune “Motherland and Life” was adopted as a protest anthem. Castillo Pérez was arrested by state safety officers in Could 2021.
Based on the Human Rights Watch, the artists had been arraigned on a laundry checklist of expenses together with public dysfunction, contempt, and, in Otero Alcántara’s case, “insulting nationwide symbols” for his use of the Cuban flag within the performance piece Drapeau, by which he wore or carried the flag uninterrupted for a month. Castillo Pérez was sentenced to 9 years in jail.
“They’re two emblematic examples of how Miguel Díaz-Canel’s authorities makes use of the judicial system to criminalize important voices, together with by way of expenses of alleged crimes which are incompatible with worldwide regulation,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Americas director at Amnesty Worldwide, said in a statement upon their sentencing.
