Two of Cuba’s Obispo Street Protesters Are Released After Eight Months in Prison

Protesters on Obispo Street in Havana on April 30, 2021. (Capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 4 January 2022 — The activists Inti Soto and Ángel Cuza, two of the six protesters arrested after the April 30 sit-in on Obispo Street in Havana, were released on Tuesday, after eight months in prison, confirmed Mary Karla Ares, an independent journalist also arrested during the protest, told 14ymedio.

Cuza was in the Combinado del Sur prison in Matanzas. “I just spoke with him, really he hasn’t even come home, he’s on his way. I’ve been in contact with him all this time and now he called me to break the news,” Ares said.

For her part, Soto’s wife, in conversation with this newspaper, said that the activist was released on Tuesday afternoon and has been in the Taco Taco prison, in San Cristóbal, Artemisa. “We are happy, but very nervous. We are on our way to pick him up because he called us to go and get him,” she explained. Last September, activists Thais Mailén Franco Benítez and Yuisan Cancio were also released. Previously, in May, Mary Karla Ares had been released from prison. They are still keeping reporter Esteban Rodríguez in prison; his family has no news about when he will be released.

In their protest, the protesters tried to approach the house of the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who was then on a hunger strike, when the Police tried to prevent them. At the time, they sat down to protest against what they saw as a limitation of their right to free movement and were detained.

The video, broadcast live from the house, sparked broad solidarity with the detainees of that day. Amnesty International was one of the first international organizations to call for the immediate release of these protesters.

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