The musician Abel González Lescay, prosecuted for demonstrating peacefully on July 11 in San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, he has been sentenced to six years in prison. The artist himself detailed this Thursday that he will appeal the sanction. “The process is not over,” he warns him in a publication in your networks. “I assure you that if I go to prison I will prepare as beatboxer and I’m going to have a good time.”
Very combative, the young musician has announced his intention to appeal. “The process is not over. Another filthy lie trial and then there is a review process if I’m not mistaken.”
The day before, he had announced the sentence in a Facebook post: “They threw six sticks at me, how cheeky, asere”. And he said that he would offer a concert in streaming this Friday organized by the cultural group La Casa Amarilla, at 8 pm.
The day before, he had announced the sentence in a Facebook post: “They gave me six sticks, how cheeky, asere”
court last january 26, Lescay faced, in principle, seven years in prison, for the crimes of public disorder, aggravated contempt of a continuing nature and contempt of the basic figure of a continuing nature, and awaited his sentence outside of prison. Finally, the sanction is four years for “aggravated contempt”, two for “public disorder” and one for contempt of the basic figure, which they leave at six.
A few days before the trial, in San José de las Lajas, he spoke with 14ymedio and he remembered everything he suffered when they arrested him, one day after the protests, taking him out of his house naked, and he remained for six days under torture and death threats.
After being released, on July 18, “complicated” days arrived, he recalled then. “It’s ugly what happens in prison, and then on the street you stay poisoned for a while.”
Since then, he has tried to carry on with his daily life. “They haven’t told me anything else since I left on July 18, neither how I have to behave nor what I have to do,” she told this newspaper. “I am in house arrest, but they have not told me to go sign any paper that follows up that I am complying with the measure, and they have not summoned me either.”
Nor has he had any problems at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA). In fact, he assured, when he joined this course he went to talk to the rector, who referred to him as “a talented student” and even gave him psychological help to recover from the impact of those days he spent in jail.
“Are art teachers who always repeat that about being authentic and sincere going to allow one of their students to go to jail for saying what they think, what they live, what they feel?”
After learning of the six-year sentence, artists and activists have spoken out in defense of Lescay on social networks. Dayana Prietoa former ISA professor and wife of Yunior García Aguilera, published on her Facebook wall from Madrid an “open letter to ISA students and professors in Cuba”, about whom she wonders if “they will be up to Abel, if they will be able to sleep peacefully knowing that this young artist will be imprisoned unjustly”.
In the letter, he refers to Lescay as “a healthy human being, a young man consistent with his generation, free inside, who despite everything wants to give away his music as medicine for the soul.” And he questions: “Are art teachers who always repeat that of being authentic and sincere going to allow one of their students to go to jail for saying what they think, what they live, what they feel? Are ISA students to accept that the University of the Arts is in the repressive hands of a rector and other deans who participate in acts of repudiation of other artists, who are incapable of defending the integrity of the student body?
Prieto mentions “the elite intellectuals who find it so difficult to accept alternative art movements and from their official chimeras call them marginal”, whom he addresses saying that “they need much more than him to free themselves and give free rein to his true thoughts. “Take advantage and do it for once, those who until now have kept absolute silence, I hope you will do it now, and do not tolerate the condemnation of another artist, of a student of yours,” asks the artist.
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