Oscar Casanella is a Cuban activist and a biochemist by profession, born in Havana, Cuba, on February 22, 1979.
Casanella, who worked as a professor at the University of Havana and as a senior researcher at the National Oncology and Radiology Institute (INOR), began to be coerced in 2013 to sever his friendships with political opponents; otherwise, his labor rights would be restricted, and he was even threatened with expulsion from INOR. This expulsion ultimately occurred in June 2016 under the pretext of workplace indiscipline. That same year, he was also expelled from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Havana, where he served as an adjunct professor, without receiving a salary.
Since then, the young scientist, who has unsuccessfully appealed to the Labor Justice Body (OJL) of the company MEDICUBA regarding the unjust nature of his dismissal, has focused on denouncing the abuses and penalties he has faced from the State Security Organs and the vice director of INOR, Lorenzo Anasagasti.
"Many Cubans face a significant ethical and personal conflict due to the dictatorship, forcing them to choose between their profession and their personal life and beliefs," Casanella has stated in relation to the controversial friendship he shares with Ciro Javier Díaz Penedo, Gorki Luis Aguila Carrasco, Lia Villares, Ariel Urquiola, among others.
In August 2019, along with other professors and university students, he joined a letter urging the Government to comply with the law and put an end to discriminatory and punitive measures in the country, following the controversial statement made by the First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Higher Education (MES), Martha del Carmen Mesa Valenciano, who claimed that "the Cuban university professor must be a 'defender of our political convictions'."
Casanella, through its social media, highlights the food shortage faced by the Cuban people by posting photos of the long lines that Cubans endure to obtain food, as well as other events that reflect the deterioration, unsanitary conditions, and precariousness of a suffocating society that demands changes in government management.
Like other Cuban activists fighting for change in Cuba, he has personally suffered from the repressive violence of Cuban agents. In 2019, while participating in the independent march against homophobia, he was struck in the chest and abdomen by four officers who inflicted multiple injuries that required sutures and hospital care. He was subsequently detained.
In December 2019, when he was about to accompany the mother of Cuban biologist and activist Ariel Urquiola, he was detained by Cuban police to prevent him from going to the airport.
