Cuba: Unidentified artists released from hospital four weeks | Social and Cultural Affairs
Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, the leader of the San Isidro opposition group, was admitted to hospital on May 2 after a famine.
A Cuban singer who had been starving for eight days has been released from hospital, Havana health officials said on Monday.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, the 33-year-old leader of the San Isidro exhibition (MSI) for artists and students who want freedom of expression, went on hunger strike last month against protesters who held him hostage.
He was he was hospitalized on May 2, eight days of starvation.
“I am very happy and relieved, now they are at home,” Otero’s Alcantara colleague and fellow activist Iris Ruiz told Reuters news agency. “There was a lot of uncertainty in the past.”
General Calixto Garcia University Hospital where he received announced his “complete recovery” and said Otero Alcantara “once again expressed his gratitude to the staff who took care of him at every opportunity”.
At the beginning of the first hospital stay, officials released videos that appeared to be in good health but those living near Otero Alcantara said they were unable to contact him.
Amnesty International earlier this month described him as a “prisoner of conscience”, saying that the state security seems to be monitoring him and putting him in hospital.
U.S. State Secretary Julie Chung expressed concern over Otero Alcantara’s admission to the hospital and urged the Cuban government to “take immediate action to protect life and health”.
The US ambassador to Cuba also said at the time that Otero Alcantara, like all Cubans, “deserves to be treated with dignity and respect”.
When he was arrested last month, he was released but was arrested several times for trying to leave his home, where police had surrounded him.
When he was hungry, his internet activity was cut short and police barred people, including two priests, from visiting Otero Alcantara.
MSI said she was taken to the hospital under duress and that medical reports on her illness were “confusing and contradictory”.
In a show of solidarity, last week about 20 Cuban artists requested that their works at Havana’s Fine Arts Museum be hidden from view. The museum rejected the request, saying it was not “public interest”.
Artist Tomas Sanchez, 73, wrote on Facebook: “Cuban art goes back to a time of crisis….
Members of the San Isidro Movement who attended a missing show before the Ministry of Culture in November against the ban on free speech and the detention of artists and activists.
Since then, government officials have hired state-run journalists to denounce their members and colleagues as terrorists who are working with the US to undermine the government. The group has denied the allegations.
