They warn Cuba has launched another black spring: regime has stepped up crackdown on dissidents

Cuba experiences “a climate of violence and repression similar to that of the so-called Black Spring in 2003”, warned a few days ago more than 200 artists and intellectuals from Cuba and other countries, who draw attention to the rise of repression on the island by the regime chaired by Miguel Díaz-Canel, in the face of the emergence of a mobilized youth who does not seem willing to live under the authoritarian parameters of the past.

18 years ago, dictator Fidel Castro, now deceased, thwarted a call for free speech by sentencing 75 dissidents to prison, among activists, doctors and 32 independent journalists. The last prisoners in this group have just been released from prison between 2010 and 2011 in a release process made possible by the mediation of the Cuban Catholic Church in front of Raúl Castro. Today, the target is artists, young people who do not want to give up their freedom of expression in the face of retrograde authoritarianism.

The Cuban dictatorship is targeting dozens of them. He persecutes them, monitors their every move, prevents them from meeting, demonstrating, desecrating their works and even copying their slogans.

Today, the symbol of the regime’s repression is Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the leader of the San Isidro movement, arbitrarily admitted to a Havana hospital for a month by the Cuban dictatorship. The 33-year-old artist, declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, was admitted to the psychiatric sector of Calixto Garcia hospital on 2 May, after spending a week on hunger and thirst strike for protest against the constant harassment that suffers from the Castro regime and the destruction of many of his works.

The dissident is being held against his will in hospital, where they denounce that a strong security device has been deployed and that his relatives are not allowed access.

Since his arrival at the hospital, state media have broadcast several videos of Otero Alcántara, all without a verifiable date and supposedly recorded by the medical team treating him, but which his environment attributes to state security. .

The latter came out last week and shows the artist in a hospital room, looking haggard and visibly skinny, eating from a tray with his hands.

“This video shows Luis is bad, he is skinny and listless when he speaks, I was very alarmed to see him like that. I think they secretly recorded, the video is full of clippings. It’s another of the state security manipulations, but this time Luis’s image is relevant, you can see how much he’s going through there, ”said dancer Chabelly Díaz, friend of Otero, at the EFE agency.

For her part, opposition MP Ileana Hernández, close to the MSI, estimated that the activist “is in a state of submission” and adds that he fears being drugged. “His gestures and his way of speaking differ greatly from his normal state, he does not speak as if he is lucid”, Held.

Several entities and institutions have denounced the situation or expressed their concern, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United States government and the European Parliament.

“How is it possible that a patient in a hospital is not allowed visits or the phone?” He asked on Twitter this week the United States Embassy in Havana, which demanded “that Otero Alcántara and all Cubans be respected and treated with dignity”.

Amnesty International urged “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 to express himself peacefully and must be released immediately and unconditionally,” said Erika Guevara, director of IA for the Americas.

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 his immediate family”. In addition, “he doesn’t seem to have access to his phone or to the outside world,” he added.

Alcántara’s case is an emblem but not the only example of the brutality of the regime. Some of the artists who were behind “released a manifesto on Thursday calling for the release of Maykel Osorbo and Eliexer Márquez (El Funky), two of the rappers who composed” Patria y Vida “, the song and music video that rocked the island since it was released three months ago, they are kidnapped by the dictatorship.

Asiel Babastro, director of the clip, and composers Alexander Delgado, Descemer Bueno, Randy Malcolm and Yotuel Romero, are among the signatories of the proclamation condemning “the disappearance, arrest and prosecution of all artists co-authors of the video clip. who live in Cuba.

“Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel ‘el Osorbo’ Castillo must be released immediately,” demanded the US embassy in Havana. In the text, the diplomatic legation clarified that “The United States rejects the detention of artists for exercising their freedom of expression”, and that “the Cuban government cannot silence its critics by violating their human rights”.

“The terror of April and May in Cuba was marked by the repression and harassment of independent artists, activists and journalists by the State Security,” denounce more than 200 artists. They further claim that Due to the popularity of the song “Patria y Vida”, the seat of government intensified: “Police fences, arbitrary arrests, women mistreated and beaten by police and officials, surveillance cameras installed by government companies in front of the houses of the militants. , in addition to the cancellation of telephone lines and Internet signal, preventing communication and denouncing the atrocities of the dictatorship ”.

In addition, Otero Alcántara, Osorbo and El Funky, Esteban Rodríguez, Mary Karla Ares, Thais Mailén Franco, Inti Soto, Ángel Cuza, Yuisán Cancio and Adrián Coruneaux were attacked by police and security officers from the State after demonstrating peacefully in Havana and have since been jailed.

“We call on the international community of solidarity to demand that Cuba respect the commitments made in terms of human rights and that the state of terror put in place cease,” say the dissidents.

“Freedom and justice for all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience! Motherland and life! They repeat over and over in what has already become a cry for help to the world.

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