Visual artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara arrived in the United States on 18 July, after approximately ten days during which Cuban authorities concealed his whereabouts.
State security agents removed him from Guanajay Prison near Havana on 7 July and took him to an undisclosed location, two days before he was due to complete his unjust five-year sentence for “contempt”, “public disorder” and “insulting national symbols”. The independent legal aid organisation Cubalex filed a habeas corpus petition on his behalf. However, the authorities failed to disclose his location or publicly account for his custody while the petition was pending. He was later released on the condition that he leave Cuba and was admitted to the United States.
On 9 July the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances had activated Urgent Action No. 2357/2026, demanding Cuban authorities guarantee Otero Alcántara’ssafety and report on the case. It was the third such urgent action in under a month on behalf of Cuban artists and activists.
Freemuse welcomes Otero Alcántara’s freedom but stresses that exile is not justice. Any release of a person imprisoned for political reasons must come with full liberty, guarantees of non-repetition, and proper reparation.
Cuba still holds more than 700 political prisoners, including at least 17 artists, according to the Cuban Observatory for Cultural Rights. Among them are the rappers Maykel Osorbo, serving a nine-year sentence and Matos MC K-Libre, arrested in June.
Osorbo, a close collaborator of Otero Alcántara, was recently transferred to Guanajay Prison and placed in the same cell his friend had just left. Cubalex calls the move a tactic of psychological control through prison transfers.
Matos MC K-Libre was arrested on 25 June and briefly held incommunicado. He was transferred to Valle Grande prison in the Havana outskirts in early July, where he remains, formally charged with “public disorder” for allegedly leading protests in Havana’s Barbosa neighbourhood on the night of 18–19 June, sparked by power cuts lasting more than 30 consecutive hours.
Freemuse calls on the Cuban government to release immediately all artists and cultural workers imprisoned for their artistic work and/or political views, and to end its practice of using disappearance, transfer and exile as tools of repression.
