Cuban State Security has released Gorki Aguila, the dissident punk rocker they arrested when he tried to board a flight to Mexico on Saturday. Aguila was fined 2,000 pesos and warned by the communist regime that they would continue to harass him in the same manner unless he accepted forced exile and left the country.
Musician and activist Gorki Aguila released
Musician, activist, and opposition figure Gorki Luis Águila Carrasco was released on Saturday afternoon, as confirmed by Ciro Javier Díaz Penedo on Facebook.
“Gorki was released last Saturday night after going through this stormy situation. He missed his flight,” the member of the punk band Porno para Ricardo said.
Díaz Penedo also told Diario de Cuba that the musician was fined 2,000 pesos and that, in a contradiction, State Security agents “told him that if he didn’t leave, they would do this and that to him.”
Águila Carrasco was detained on Friday afternoon by State Security at José Martí International Airport in Havana.
The leader of Porno para Ricardo was about to take a flight to Mexico City and after being informed that he could not travel because he was regulated, he was arrested by State Security.
A video circulated by independent media outlet elToque showed the moment when a customs official denied the artist his right to travel at José Martí International Airport.
On Friday, the Observatory of Cultural Rights (ODC) had issued an alert about the arbitrary detention of the musician, who is also an activist, visual artist, and dissident.
“The ODC condemns the forced disappearance the repressive apparatus serving the State in Cuba recurrently carries out. The ODC calls for the solidarity of institutions and organizations committed to the defense of human rights,” the statement read.
In recent years, Águila has been systematically subjected to detentions and interrogations due to his opposition to the regime.
Neither is it the first time he has been denied exit from the country. In 2018, State Security prevented him from boarding a flight to Miami and informed him that he had a “travel restriction.”