Louis Roblesthe “young man with the banner”, still has not received his sentence despite the fact that next Wednesday three months of his trial. The Prosecutor’s Office requested six years in prison for him for the crimes of resistance and enemy propaganda.
Imprisoned since he was arrested on December 4, 2020 for walking down San Rafael Boulevard in Centro Habana with a sign calling for the end of repression and the freedom of rapper Denis Solís, a member of the San Isidro Movement and currently in exile. , the 29-year-old has published a letter in which he reiterates his fight and his objective: “freedom for the people of Cuba”.
In the letter, dated March 3 and delivered to his brother, Landy Fernandez Elizastiguiduring a visit last Wednesday to the Combinado del Este maximum security prison in Havana, Robles returns to the reasons that led him to carry out the peaceful protest that today has him in jail.
So that “fear and censorship no longer rule Cuban society, so that expressing what you think and feel anywhere is not a reason to go to jail, because I want Cuba to be a country for Cubans
“I decided to break the silence because I got tired of seeing how my country is destroyed and the government does nothing to fix it,” he explains, “because I think that Cuba’s greatest enemy is not outside but sitting in the presidential chair.”
Thus, he assures that his action was so that “fear and censorship do not continue to rule in Cuban society, so that expressing what you think and feel in any place is not a reason to go to jail, because I want Cuba to be a country for Cubans, no matter their way of thinking, so that the streets of my country are for everyone and not just for the communists”.
He states that going out with that banner and continuing to express what he thinks is the way to “be the voice of many who decided to remain silent”, and mentions Denis Solís – released in exchange for exile to Serbia –, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Perez Osorb, “prisoners only for wanting homeland and life for Cuba.”
About Osorbo offered news this Friday the curator Anamely Ramoswho assures that the rapper’s lawyer “received a notification that the trial process would begin”, which the prisoner has been waiting for since he was arrested on May 18, accused of “attack”, “public disorder” and “evasion of imprisoned or detained” by some events that occurred on April 4in a demonstration on Damas street, in front of the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement, when the police tried to arrest him and he refused to get on the patrol.
This process, explains Ramos in a post of Facebook, “includes several procedures such as the issuance of the tax petition, which we still do not have.” The situation, he continues, “was what we feared: that the international coverage of the invasion of Ukraine would be used by the Cuban state to give the repression another twist and ‘solve’ the problem with its most visible opponents.”
The curator, who this very Wednesday announced his departure from the San Isidro Movementdoes not know if the process will also include Otero Alcántara, given that his case is in the same Osorbo file, but he affirms that these past few days he has been in close contact with the singer, who has asked everyone “to be aware of how We’re going to take judgment.”
“The clarity he maintains to understand what is happening in Cuba and what is happening with him is impressive. Maykel has never been annulled, and that is admirable after nine months in prison. He knows much more than a victim, much more than a prisoner. And as such he will behave until the end”.
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