14ymedio, Havana, 8 February 2024 — The Provincial Court of Artemisa rejected an application for parole for the Cuban artist and political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, as revealed on Wednesday by art curator Claudia Genlui on her social networks.
The leader of the San Isidro Movement was imprisoned in July 2021 and sentenced in June 2022 to five years in prison for the crimes of insulting the symbols of the homeland, contempt and public disorder. Despite the fact that he was not legally eligible to apply for parole, the reason, according to Genlui, is not related to those regulations.
According to the resolution, “The purposes of the penalty have not been achieved, and he is not in a position to face social reintegration in a positive way before family and society. The maximum penalty, having to remain in prison, applies for crimes under Instruction 273 of the Council of Government of the Popular Supreme Court.”
In this sanction, “the purposes of the sentence have not been achieved, and he is not in a position to face social reintegration in a positive way before family and society”
Genlui, the artist’s partner and one of his main spokespersons since he entered prison, said that Otero Alcántara’s family and friends will continue to denounce the violence of the system, which never ceases to intimidate citizens. “Those who are not in a position to face society or their own relatives are all the Castro judges, prosecutors and military who are part of the fascist and macabre game of the dictatorship,” she wrote.
The law specifies that any prisoner who has served a third of his sentence, in the case of children under 20 years of age at the time of imprisonment, or half the penalty for primary sanctions and two-thirds in the case of repeat offenders, is able to apply for parole. The latter would be the case of the artist, who since 2017 has suffered a multitude of arrests, the first that year for “illegal possession of construction materials” related to the 00 Biennial, an alternative art exhibition to the official Biennial of Havana.
It is unknown if the court states in its resolution that the artist does not meet any formal requirement, but it does point out reasons related to an alleged inability to live in society. In addition, it expressly alludes to Instruction 273, approved by the Supreme Court in 2022 and called the “policy of rigor in the face of the most harmful behaviors that affect society and the population.” It lists a long series of crimes that affect “citizen tranquility” including “altering public and constitutional order.”
Instruction 273, approved by the Supreme Court in 2022, is called the “policy of rigor in the face of the most harmful behaviors that affect society and the population”
The State considers that those who have committed crimes of this type, as is the case of Otero Alcántara, must compulsorily serve two-thirds of their sentence in order to be able to apply for parole and, in addition, conform to a “good behavior” that will be evaluated by officials. The instruction also penalizes those who use social networks to “foment crime.”
Alcántara has been in the maximum security prison of Guanajay, in Artemisa, since 11 July 2021, when he was arrested before he could join the massive anti-government protests of that day. The artist was tried along with his friend, the protest rapper Maykel Osorbo Castillo; with the former sentenced to 9 years in prison and the later sentenced to five years of deprivation of liberty.
Amnesty International named him as a prisoner of conscience in May 2021 and has not stopped asking for his release, as the visible head of hundreds currently in Cuba.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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