MIAMI, United States.- The Cuban artivist and political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, sentenced by the regime to five years in prison, is in a “walled-up cell and alone”, denounced this friday the San Isidro Movement (MSI).
“Luis Manuel Otero received a visit yesterday (Thursday) from his family. He denounces that he suffered an attack by a common prisoner and that, after that fact, the Guanajay officials have continued to place him at risk, ”says the post on the Movement’s Facebook account.
According to the information, the family of Otero Alcántara, who served as an intermediary between the political prisoner and the San Isidro Movement, said that only four days ago the young man was transferred to a walled-up cell and alone.
“Luis has suffered from dengue like several prisoners around him and he has been prohibited from receiving letters from friends such as Katherine Bisquet, Coco Fusco or Anamely Ramos. Nor would they have allowed him to draw until just a few days ago when his materials were returned to him, ”adds the complaint.
“Luis continues to have cramps in his hands and feet, and he has not received medical attention or diagnosis in this regard,” said the MSI, which denounced the physical and psychological violence to which Otero Alcántara is being subjected, not only by prisoners sent by the Security of the State, but also by the officers of the Guanajay prison.
“This situation is not atypical, we know that it is the only tool that the regime has to try to intimidate and coerce Cuban opponents. We repeat that whatever happens to Luis Manuel is the entire responsibility of the Cuban dictatorship,” he added.
Last June, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, artist and human rights defender, and founder of the San Isidro Movement, was sentenced to prisonn for the alleged crimes of continuous outrage against the symbols of the country, contempt and public disorder.
Inside the prison, Luisma, as his friends know him, has carried out at least three hunger strikes demanding his freedom. The most recent was in early July, the previous one from January 18 to February 22, 2022, and the first from September 27 to October 12, 2021.
The arts curator and activist Claudia Genlui Hidalgo denounced in July the danger that Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara faces in the Guanajay Maximum Security Prison.
“He has asked me to denounce that ‘he is not in a camp, he is suffering, he is under torture and his life is in danger.’ Precisely because of his visibility and his importance in the thought process of Cuban civil society, Alcántara is in constant danger, not only that they may try to complicate his sentence and leave him in prison for more years, but also his life, his health and his physical integrity,” he wrote on his Facebook account.
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