Declaration of Artists Protesting in front of Cuba's Ministry of Culture

Declaration of Artists Protesting in front of Cuba's Ministry of Culture

We, Cuban artists, influencers and intellectuals, repudiate, denounce and condemn the inability of government institutions in Cuba to engage in dialogue and recognize dissent, activist autonomy, empowerment of minorities and respect for human and citizen rights.

We, in solidarity with our brothers in the Movimiento San Isidro, demand that justice not be exercised at the discretion [of the powerful]. Justice cannot protect the government above the rights of its citizens.

We know that today's Cuba demands that the government eliminate political hatred and create real and effective systems from which the demands of the citizens are listened to, establishing guarantees for an unprejudiced and honest dialogue that does not have retaliate against those who speak out.

We cannot continue living in a country where there is no security for journalists, activists and those who disagree. Enough of arbitrary arrests, and causes created at the convenience and whims of the powerful, which today has not been able to respond to the people but only to its own survival in power.

Today, we owe ourselves a different Cuba, where everyone has the same opportunity to participate in the direction that the country takes. 

 In solidarity with the Movimiento San Isidro and against the brutality, the inability to dialogue honestly, and the propensity for defamation, the violence and the discrediting of the Ministry of the Interior and the institutions that appear to the world as representatives of the legitimate interests of Cuban society, we demand the immediate cessation of these attitudes and the beginning of a process that involves dialogue, but that leads to the formation of a society in which all Cubans have the freedom to express themselves and the possibility of participating in the direction the country takes. 

Translation by Michael Deibert.