Criminalisation and ill-treatment of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara
On 14 March 2020, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was released from El Vivac detention centre. He is still awaiting trial on fabricated charges of property damage, in addition to other charges previously brought against him.
On 1 March 2020, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was arrested when leaving his house to attend a peaceful protest organised by the LGTBIQ community to call for freedom of expression. During the arrest, his girlfriend Claudia Genlui was violently beaten, and both had their phones confiscated. Since the entry into force of Decree 349, artists have been protesting against government control over cultural productions, resulting in a number of arbitrary arrests.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a visual artist and human rights defender from Cuba. He is the general coordinator of the San Isidro Collective, a group of artists formed in 2018 to promote freedom of expression and cultural rights in light of the restrictions introduced by the Decree 349. Over the past years, he has been using art and cultural expressions to contest violations of freedom of expression by the Cuban government.
On 14 March 2020, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was released from El Vivac detention centre. He is still awaiting trial on fabricated charges of property damage, in addition to other charges previously brought against him.
The human rights defender has not been informed when his trial will take place for property damage, with which he was charged after reportedly having damaged a small removable plastic accessory of a police car during his arbitrary arrest. He has been previously charged with aggravated contempt toward state leadership and desecration of national symbols. Neither of these offences is punishable with imprisonment. Local human rights defenders believe that the additional charge of property damage has been brought against Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara to accumulate charges in order to allow for a custodial sentence. He is facing up to five years’ imprisonment.
Front Line Defenders welcomes the release of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara but remains deeply concerned about his ongoing criminalisation.
On 1 March 2020, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was arrested when leaving his house to attend a peaceful protest organised by the LGTBIQ community to call for freedom of expression. During the arrest, his girlfriend Claudia Genlui was violently beaten, and both had their phones confiscated. Since the entry into force of Decree 349, artists have been protesting against government control over cultural productions, resulting in a number of arbitrary arrests.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a visual artist and human rights defender from Cuba. He is the general coordinator of the San Isidro Collective, a group of artists formed in 2018 to promote freedom of expression and cultural rights in light of the restrictions introduced by the Decree 349. Over the past years, he has been using art and cultural expressions to contest violations of freedom of expression by the Cuban government.
On 1 March 2020, at 2:30 pm, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was arrested on fabricated charges of property damage, as he was leaving his house to join a protest organised by the LGTBIQ community in front of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión). The defender was ill-treated during the arrest. When his girlfriend Claudia Genlui tried to film the incident, she was violently beaten and thrown to the ground by an officer of the National Revolutionary Police. Both had their phones confiscated, and were denied documents to prove that.
The next day, members of the San Isidro Collective went to the Directorate General of the National Revolutionary Police (Dirección General de la Policía Nacional Revolucionaria) to request information about Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. They were told that he would remain detained in a detention centre known as “el Vivac” awaiting an “abbreviated summary trial” (juicio sumario abreviado), an obscure procedure whereby the accused is sentenced within ten days. The grounds for the charges brought against the human rights defender were not disclosed. He might be facing up to 5 years’ imprisonment.
In late 2018, Decree 349, which gives control over cultural and artistic productions to the Cuban government and provides a list of prohibited subjects, was met with protests and contestations by the Cuban artistic community. Since then, public demonstrations have commonly resulted in arbitrary detentions lasting for several days. Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has been arrested 24 times since then. Each time, the authorities denied him any proof of detention.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has been previously charged with aggravated contempt toward state leadership and desecration of national symbols. Neither of these offences is punishable with imprisonment. Local human rights defenders believe that the additional charge of property damage has been brought against Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara to accumulate charges and allow for his sentencing to prison.
Front Line Defenders is concerned about the arbitrary arrest, criminalisation and ill-treatment of Luis M anuel Otero Alcántara, as well as the ill-treatment of his girlfriend Claudia Genlui. These acts are believed to be solely motivated by his peaceful activities promoting freedom of expression and cultural rights, and may constitute a chilling message to Cuban defenders and the artistic community promoting freedom of expression. Front Line Defenders is further concerned about the recurrent use of the state security apparatus to repress human rights defenders who promote freedom of expression.
