Police Beating of Maykel Osorbo
On April 12, 2021, Maykel Castillo (Osorbo), Cuban rapper and coordinator of the San Isidro Movement was the target of a brutal beating by thugs at the service of the State Security Police. Evidence of the State Security involvement in the attack is provided by Osorbo’s own testimony who pointed to a State Security agent recording the attack, while other police agents watched and did nothing to stop it. As a result of the attack, Maykel’s nasal rectum was deviated, and he had to seek medical attention at the maxillofacial surgeon in the hospital.
In this video in which Maykel Osorbo denounced the attack, and reiterated that he will continue leading the peaceful struggle for democratic change in Cuba and in a direct message Diaz Canel, the State Security and the dictatorship, he said: “
Not even throwing a thousand blows you will make me cross my arms and shut my mouth.. I will keep expressing myself …
Against the regime, I would never act with violence. It is just not possible to defeat you through violence because you are a killer. You don’t defeat a killer with violence … You win a war against killers through culture, freedom and art.
Maykel Osorbo has been one of the most vocal members of the San Isidro Movement. Early this year, he along with El Funky, Yotuel, Gente de Zona, December Bueno participated in the protest song Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) which has become overwhelmingly popular in Cuba and abroad, with more than 4.6 million likes since it was posted in Youtube in February 16, 2021. The song has been welcomed as an anthem of freedom and hope. It proposes an alternate, democratic and inclusive Cuba that stands in contrast with the authoritarian society imposed in Cuba since 1959.
On Abril 1, Osorbo along with Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, Amaury Pacheco, Iris Ruiz and members of the San Isidro Movement confronted the police in an Old Habana park over an attempt to arbitrarily question them. The video of the heated exchange has served San Isidro as an educational tool to give their proposed dialogue a new meaning. More recently, in April 4, police tried to arbitrarily arrest Osorbo but the people on the streets prevented the arrest. Subsequently, Osorbo encouraged a crowd to take to the streets in the San Isidro to chant “Diaz Canel es un Singao” (Diaz Canel is a fucker) in front of police. In recent weeks, other leading pro-democracy activists such as José Daniel Ferrer García, his son José Daniel Ferrer Cantillo and numerous activists of the Patriotic Union of Cuba have been the target of violent State Security coordinated attacks.
The history of regime attacks against peaceful protesters in Cuba is not a recent occurrence. It goes back to February 25, 1960 when members of the University Militia along with alleged dockers brutally beaten-up university students peacefully gathering at the CMQ TV studios in Havana to protest the communist path of the revolution. Targeted violent attacks against Cubans with different ideas has ever since been a systematic and calculated practice of the Cuban dictatorship.
Democratic Spaces calls upon the government of Canada and other democratic nations to raise a voice against violent attacks on peaceful dissident artists and human rights activists in Cuba. This form of state terror along with intimidation, arbitrary arrests, fines, fabricated prosecutions, acts of repudiation and defamation have been condemned by human rights groups and democratic governments, including the Government of Canada, for decades.