Otero handcuffed to hospital bed. Cuban scientist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola reported that artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara remains handcuffed to a bed at the Calixto Garcia Hospital in Havana, where he has been held incommunicado since authorities transferred them to that facility on Sunday.
"He is in a ward of the Calixto Garcia guarded by the political police. He has two henchmen in a permanent post in front of him, with cameras placed in the place where he is to be able to detect if anyone tries to take any photographs or make any filming," said Urquiola.
This information came to the biologist's hands from two close sources who for the moment decided to remain anonymous for security reasons, but who at some point will reveal their identity.
"Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is in similar conditions so that no photos can be taken of the state of flagrant violation and humiliation of his human rights," said the biologist who gave details of when he was in a hospital in Pinar del Río also on strike.
As he explained, the artist is handcuffed to the bed, with parenteral hydration and with a probe from where he is given liquid food by mouth in a forced manner.
"It is inhuman and degrading treatment, penalized by international law," Urquiola said.
He also called not to judge Luis Manuel Otero in the midst of a situation such as the one he is going through, as a result of the controversial video that the government began to circulate and which has aroused suspicions of many types.
The biologist also communicated to Cubans inside Cuba that "do not rest, take off the skirt of cowardice, there is a man who is being abused, and you, from the skirt of cowardice are an accomplice and history does not forgive," he said.
The actions of the political police with Luis Manuel, reminds Ariel Ruiz Urquiola of his case, when he was on hunger and thirst strike in ward K of the Abel Santamaría provincial hospital in Pinar del Río, where he was inoculated with the HIV virus and "where day in and day out, a group of henchmen of the political police climbed with ladders to the false ceiling of the ward itself to check and locate any kind of camera and detect if anyone could have any conversation with me, because I was completely isolated".
The activist and friend of Luis Manuel Otero, AfrikReina, echoed this information: "Luis handcuffed to the stretcher and subjected to tube feeding.... Abused and tortured. All his rights and physical integrity violated," she said.
Of Luis Manuel Otero, who was forcibly removed from his house in Old Havana in his seventh day of hunger and thirst strike, only the information disseminated by the government through the controversial video in which the artist appears in a hospital room with a doctor, and assures that "the medical attention, the medical staff has been spectacular", and that he maintained his demands.
In view of the opinions of all kinds generated after the video, Ariel Ruiz Urquiola said that "before making any value judgment on a person who is undoubtedly brave, heroic, in the midst of a people who do not come out from under the skirts of cowardice, we must be very careful with the comments".
"Truly that video (Otero's) when one sees it, the first thing that produces is a feeling of great repulsion, but we cannot let ourselves be carried away by that psyche, because we are conscious and as conscious we have to see the criminal record of the ill-named Cuban revolution", he assured.
