The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2020
A Diaspora’s Hope and a Dissident’s Bravery
Saying what you think can have dire consequences for Cubans.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara speaks with the media from his home in Havana, May 2, 2018.
Photo: alexandre meneghini/Reuters
Ms. O’Grady is spot on. Speaking critically of Fidel Castro, as Cuban artist and dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has done, isn’t common practice. Saying what you think can have dire consequences for Cubans.
Eduardo Cardet Concepción, the Christian Liberation Movement’s national coordinator, is of impeccable character and widely respected in his community. Dr. Cardet is a physician, a husband and a father of two. Following Castro’s 2016 death, Dr. Cardet told the Madrid-based esRadio, “Castro was a very controversial man, very much hated and rejected by our people.”
On Nov. 30, 2016, when Dr. Carcet returned to Cuba, state security beat him in front of his wife and children, and jailed him. Amnesty International recognized him a prisoner of conscience. His predecessor in the Christian Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Payá, was killed along with the movement’s youth leader, Harold Cepero Escalante, on July 22, 2012.
Sentenced in a 2017 show trial to three years imprisonment, Dr. Cardet was beaten up again and stabbed repeatedly. Because his family campaigned for his release, the dictatorship denied family visits as punishment. Dr. Cardet was paroled on May 4, 2019, after two years, five months and four days in prison, and freed on Sept. 30, 2019.
This was the price for speaking candidly. Both Dr. Cardet and Mr. Otero Alcántara continue to do it.
John Suarez
Executive Director
Center for a Free Cuba
Falls Church, Va.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-diaspora-s-hope-and-a-dissidents-bravery-11608754031