Cuban dissident artist Tania Bruguera vows to continue protest against Decree 349, law prohibiting free artistic expression

Frances Martel reports in Breitbart:

Cuban Artist Plans Strike Before Culture Ministry ‘Until They Free Everyone’

Cuban artist Tania Bruguera was arrested on Monday, along with a cohort of fellow protesters, in front of Havana’s Ministry of Culture headquarters while protesting a new law that bans the creation of music or art without a license from the government.

Bruguera, arrested many times throughout her career for a variety of illegal free speech art installations, told Miami’s Martí news outlet that she has planned to protest in front of the Ministry indefinitely until the government frees all fellow artists arrested for denouncing Decree 359, the law that puts the ban in place.

Cuba has imprisoned a large variety of artists, from materials artists to rappers, for objecting to the decree in public. At least two rappers have begun a hunger strike behind bars demanding their freedom.

Bruguera, Martí reported, was detained for seven hours on Monday along with historian Yanelys Núñez Leyva and fellow protester Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. The Spanish newspaper Diario de Cuba added the names of artists Amaury Pacheco and Michel Matos to those arrested in front of the Ministry of Culture this weekend and into Monday, and it reported that the government blocked writer Verónica Vega, husband and painter Yasser Castellanos, and poet Javier Morenos from leaving their homes, imposing a form of ad hoc house arrest.

The Castro regime has opted to arbitrarily detain protesters and Cuban dissidents for hours and release them without charging them for a crime rather than turn them into political prisoners, as the latter tends to attract the condemnation of human rights advocates around the world.

Bruguera spoke to Martí after being released, vowing to continue her protests in the name of artists in the minority of those whom the regime charges with a crime and imprisons after sentencing.

“I told them that if anyone remained in prison, I wasn’t moving from there,” Bruguera said, referring to the Ministry of Culture. “Now I am out … I am heading to the Ministry of Culture. I am going to stand there in front of the doors of the Ministry of Culture, where the minister enters, until they free everyone.”

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1 thought on “Cuban dissident artist Tania Bruguera vows to continue protest against Decree 349, law prohibiting free artistic expression”

  1. Heretic! How dare you question the immortal wisdom of The Great One? Who cares about art, anyway? Either it serves Castro, Inc., I mean the Revolution, or it’s bourgeois nonsense. Totalitarianism ain’t beanbag, girlfriend, so wake up and get a clue.

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