More than 300 personalities from the world of culture, some of international renown like the American actress Meryl Streep, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk or the American writer Paul Auster, on Wednesday December 8, 2021 called on the Cuban regime to be liberated “all artists arbitrarily detained “ in the island, where creators and intellectuals are at the forefront of the dispute.
“The Cuban government should immediately put an end to the abuses against Cuban artists”, notably ask the writers Isabel Allende, JM Coetzee, Khaled Hosseini or Mario Vargas Llosa, in an open letter published by the NGOs Human Rights Watch and Pen America.
The signatories, who also include novelists Elena Poniatowska, Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, also demand that the Cuban authorities’ charges against the artists be dropped.
On November 27, 2020, some 300 artists demonstrated in Havana to demand greater freedom of expression, a movement that opened the door to a series of social protests in Cuba, until the July 11 protests, the most important since the 1959 revolution. “In response, the Cuban government has systematically targeted Cuban artists, recently including those who took part in the July 11 protests, “ regret the signatories.
“It was indeed reported that several dozen artists had been arrested and placed in detention or under house arrest”, while others are “subject to constant surveillance” and others have left the country, they say.
On November 16, 2021, the opposition platform Cuba Decide denounced the arrest of more than 100 people and the house arrest of a hundred activists to prevent them, according to them, from participating in demonstrations. “Nothing can justify persecuting artists who peacefully express their point of view”, continues the letter published Wednesday.
The more than 300 artists who made the appeal call on the Communist government to “Immediately stop harassing artists whose political and social critiques do not fit into the regime’s rigid ideology.” The letter is also signed by Cuban artists like Hamlet Lavastida, forced in September into exile in Europe after being arrested in Cuba in June, accused of“incitement to delinquency” via social networks.