A PETITION TO STOP STATE SANCTIONED REPRESSION AND VIOLENCE AGAINST ARTISTS IN CUBA

As the lives of Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, Maykel Castillo and a group of Cuban artists hangs in a balance after 7 days in a hunger and thirst strike, I join pro democracy activists and freedom loving human beings around the world in solidarity with their cause by signing the petition below. I have spoken numerous times with Luis Manuel Otero and through my conversations with him I have been able to appreciate and admire his love for democratic ideals and firm commitment to the attainment of a free, inclusive and democratic Cuba.

I am signing this petition to raise a clear and loud voice of solidarity with the San Isidro Movement in Cuba. I join artists, intellectuals, human rights activists and freedom loving human beings around the world demanding that the regime in Cuba immediately stop the systematic campaign of repression against artists, journalists and activists in Cuba. It is unacceptable and it constitutes a gross human rights violation that artists such as Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara had been subjected to over 27 arbitrary arrests in the past two years in reprisal for initiating a campaign to oppose opposition to Decree-Law 349 (which institutionalized censorship in the arts and forbids independent artists from publicly showing, distributing or performing their work).  I fully support the San Isidro Movement in their campaign demanding the release artist/activist Denis Solis, arbitrarily sentenced to 8 months in prison. Denis did not commit any crime. He was only responsible for holding peaceful demonstration on the street with a placard that reads ¨People of Cuba, decide your future.” His actions are consistent with Article 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which asserts all human beings have a right to freedom of opinion and expression and freedom to peaceful assembly. 

I call on human rights activists in Canada and around the world to raise a voice against censorship of the arts and persecution of ideas in Cuba. The world cannot tolerate how independent thinking artists and activists are either arrested or forced to stay in their homes, ostracizing them in their own neighborhood and in their own nation. Only in a dictatorship an individual is persecuted, harassed, imprisoned, threatened for exercising their right to thinking differently. As José Martí, Cuba’s Apostle of independence said, “Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.” 

Michael Lima Cuadra.

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