The United States demanded that Cuba treat Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the artist hospitalized and declared “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International with “dignity and respect”.

On Friday, the United States expressed concern that the Cuban regime is trying to “with dignity and respect“To the dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, interned without communication for nearly three weeks in a Havana hospital, while Amnesty International declared him a “prisoner of conscience”.

“We ask that @ LMOAlcántara and all Cubans be respected and treated with dignityThe American Embassy in Havana pointed out on Twitter. Washington “expressed solidarity with the Cuban people and concern that the government treats them with dignity and respect“, He added.

“How is it possible that an inpatient is not entitled to visits or a telephone?», He asked himself.

The Cuban regime accuses Otero Alcántara, 33, of trying to manipulate the political situation and of being funded and managed by the American think tank, the National Democratic Institute.

Candidate member San Isidro Movement (MSI), a collective of university opposition artists, Otero Alcántara was transferred on May 2 to a Havana hospital on the eighth day after declaring a hunger strike.

With this protest demanded the return of the works of which he was stripped by security agents Yes demanded an end to police harassment against him and artistic freedom.

Last November, members and supporters of the MSI barricaded themselves in Otero Alcántara’s house in San Isidro, giving rise to a demonstration of 300 artists and intellectuals to claim freedom of expression, something new on the island.

By declaring this Friday to Otero Alcántara “prisoner of conscience“For the third time, Amnesty International urged “President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and other Cuban authorities to release him”, in a statement posted on the organization’s Internet website.

The dissident artist “was deprived of his liberty only for speaking out peacefully and should be released immediately and unconditionallySaid IA director for the Americas Erika Guevara.

The NGO denounced that since he was taken to hospital, the artist is “under the supervision or control of state security agents and with very limited visits from their immediate family“. More, “doesn’t seem to have access to their phone or the outside world“He added.

Amnesty had already summoned supporters of Otero on Thursday to write a letter to Díaz-Canel demanding his release.

Other activists and close collaborators of Otero Alcántara have confirmed that he does not have access to a telephone and that only a few relatives can visit him at the Calixto García hospital, where Castro’s police patrols have guarded the entrance for several days.

“He is in a state of abduction practically, because they have no communication with the outside like any other person admitted to the hospital ”, condemned the independent journalist Iliana Hernandez, who claims to have been under house arrest for a month for his activism against the regime.

The ballerina Chabelly Diaz, one of the people closest to Otero Alcántara, confessed to being worried: “His relatives say he is fine, but I went to the hospital and they did not let me through. I think they are hiding something very well. They won’t leave me or him ”.

Other people who came to see the dissident, however, were arrested by police or fined at the hospital door, according to activists.

(With information from AFP and EFE)

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