Cuban artist and dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara completed his five-year prison sentence this Thursday while in an unknown location, as international human rights organizations demand his immediate release and signs grow that the Cuban regime is preparing his forced deportation to the United States.
Otero Alcántara, 38, was taken out of the Guanajay maximum-security prison in the municipality of Artemisa (western Cuba) on Tuesday, without his family or those close to him receiving any official information about his destination. His family confirmed that he is not at his home in Havana, as reported by activist Yanelis Núñez.
The Cuban curator and dissident Anamely Ramos González, a member of the San Isidro Movement, denounced that the artivist is neither free nor released, but rather “disappeared.” “Neither his family nor his close friends have had any official communication, and if we know he was taken out of Guanajay, it is because of the solidarity of other prisoners,” Ramos González noted on social media.
This Thursday, Otero Alcántara communicated briefly with Ramos González from a State Security phone. “He called me from a State Security cell phone, unknown number, and the call was on speakerphone,” the activist detailed on her Facebook profile. When asked about his location, the artist replied that he could not say; Ramos González added that “possibly” not even he “knows exactly” where he is.
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Cuban artist and dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, in an archive photograph.
The curator also revealed that the Cuban authorities inquired during the call about the status of an immigration process. “Luis Manuel’s parole is still in process. He will be in that unknown place until it is resolved,” she wrote.
According to Núñez, a request for supervised release (parole) in the United States had been initiated weeks ago for Otero Alcántara, although he clarified that there was no confirmation of an actual expulsion. According to the same source, the regime had repeatedly proposed exile as an alternative to prison and was keeping the artist in a Ministry of the Interior (MININT) facility while finalizing preparations for a possible transfer to Miami.
Otero Alcántara had stated on repeated occasions that he did not wish to leave Cuba against his will. Ramos González pointed out that “the Cuban regime wants him out” and that “it took ownership of our country and uses us all to secure its possession.” Archive image of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, artist, dissident, and leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), imprisoned in Cuba. July 2021 when he tried to join the massive anti-government protests of that day, the largest in decades in Cuba. The People’s Municipal Court of Centro Habana sentenced him in June 2022 to five years of deprivation of liberty for the crimes of “contempt, public disorder, and continued outrage to the symbols of the homeland,” within Case No. 12/2022. Otero Alcántara always denied the charges and denounced multiple abuses during his imprisonment.
Last April, the Supreme People’s Court of Cuba dismissed an appeal requesting his early release, considering that he had already served the sentence that corresponded to him. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had previously concluded that his deprivation of liberty, along with that of artist Hamlet Lavastida, was “arbitrary” and asked the Cuban Government to remedy the situation “without delay.”
Performance artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara together with rapper Maykel Osorbo when they were sentenced
Amnesty International (AI) demanded the “immediate and unconditional release” of the artist, whom it considers a prisoner of conscience. “Luis Manuel, an Afro-Cuban artist and prisoner of conscience, should never have been imprisoned for expressing himself, creating art, and peacefully exercising his rights. We demand his immediate and unconditional release, without surveillance, without forced exile, and without new fabricated charges,” the NGO stated.
The organization Cubalex had requested since Tuesday “verifiable information about the whereabouts of Otero Alcántara, respect for his physical integrity, freedom of movement and communication with his relatives, as well as access to legal representation.” The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) had granted precautionary measures in February 2021 to 20 members of the San Isidro Movement—including Otero Alcántara and Ramos González—considering that their rights to life and personal integrity were at serious risk.
