In recent months, Cubans of all ages and walks of life have been charged, put on trial, or sentenced for participating in last July’s nationwide protests, in largely opaque proceedings mostly held behind closed doors, said Amnesty International today, as it calls on the authorities to allow it and other human rights observers access to the country to monitor the ongoing trials.
Cuban authorities have continued to wage a campaign of criminalization with the sole aim of re-establishing the culture of fear that was ruptured last year.
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Activists and officials in the United States are intensifying pressure on the Cuban government to release artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a member of the activist San Isidro Movement (MSI) who has been detained since July with no trial slated, and who is currently waging a hunger strike, Artnet News reports. Otero Alcántara is said to be being held at Guanajay, a maximum-security prison roughly 35 miles southwest of Havana, having been sent there without receiving a hearing after being snatched by authorities while on his way to one of the historic demonstrations that roiled Havana last