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Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, who has been in prison for more than two months, began a hunger strike to demand his freedom and that of the country’s political prisoners, the opposition leader’s partner told EFE news agency on Thursday in a phone conversation.
Activist Claudia Genlui said that the leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI) started the strike last Monday.
“He told me that if he didn’t call me on Monday he was going down the hill, which means taking on the strike,” said Genlui, who expressed her concern for the health of the 33-year-old artist imprisoned since July 11—when the massive protests against Cuba’s dictatorship broke out.
Marta, one of the dissident’s aunts, said she had “not heard anything” from her nephew.
It is not the first time that the artist adopts this measure since in April he was on hunger and thirst strike for more than five days, for which he was admitted to a hospital in Havana.
In September, Time magazine included Otero Alcántara among the 100 most influential people of 2021, considered a “prisoner of consciousness” by Amnesty International.
