Cuba's communist regime plans to force political prisoner Risdani Rodríguez Isaac, who is reportedly seven weeks pregnant, to have her unborn child killed, human rights group Prisoners Defenders accused Tuesday night. .
Rodriguez Isaac is currently a 25-year-old Cuban national. waiter Sentenced to eight years in Santa Clara's Guamayar Prison for participating in the historic wave of anti-communist protests in July 2021. Castro's government accused her of disturbing public order, “insubordination” and assault for her peaceful expression of calling for an end to more than 60 years of communist rule in Cuba.
Rodríguez Isaac is a practitioner of Cuba's unique mixed religion known as . santeria, Lukumi, or Yorubaism.she is one of three triplets.one of her other two sisters, Lisdiani Rodriguez Isaac is also a political prisoner. The imprisoned brothers are members of an independent group, Free Yoruba. santeria Practitioners who exist as an alternative to the regime-controlled Yoruba Cultural Association in Cuba.
Prisoners Defenders, a human rights NGO based in Spain, shared a video published on social media condemning the situation of pregnant political prisoners.
The video shows an audio recording of Rodríguez Isaac's mother, Barbarita Isaac Rojas, in which she receives a phone call from her daughter Lisdiani, informing her that Lisdiani is almost seven weeks pregnant. she says. Her mother accused the Castro regime of denying her imprisoned daughter food and medicine and threatening her with a forced abortion.
emergency! #Cuban Regime forces prisoner of conscience Risdani Rodríguez Isaac to have an abortion against her will
She is serving an eight-year sentence for protesting. #11J and being Yoruba #Cuba@UNHumanRights She championed her cause: AL CUB 4/2023
Please help us save her child's life! pic.twitter.com/8xT8itrSMj— Prisoners Defenders (@PrisonersDFNdrs) January 23, 2024
“I got a call from Liss Diane because she is pregnant. She [Lisdany’s] Although her husband is also in prison, she has lived with him for many years and has never been able to conceive. Coincidentally, she is currently pregnant. So she's six weeks old, almost seven years old,'' her mother can be heard saying. “They're not giving her good food there, because there's actually no food there, no medicine, nothing.”
“Now the National Security Agency wants to force her to be fired.” [abort] baby. And she told me she was going to see if I would report this because she didn't want to go out with her kids,” she continues. “She doesn't feel very well. She doesn't have Gravinol to help her with the dizziness, and she doesn't have any medication they can give her.”
barbarita isaac rojas Confirmed Informing the Argentine press about her daughter's current precarious situation infobae On Thursday, she pointed out that her daughter's husband is also a political prisoner.
“They want my daughter to have an abortion, but she doesn't want it, because she's always wanted to have a baby,” Isaac Rojas said. “I never imagined it at the moment it happened, but they [her daughter and her husband] I want that. ”
“The situation there is terrible because there is no food or medicine. She is not feeling well and has nothing to eat,” she continued. “I want you to help her and support her.”
Prisoners Defenders Chairman Javier Lalonde issued the following statement to Infobae:
The National Security Agency forces Risdani Rodríguez Isaac, a prisoner of conscience, to have an abortion against her will. Lisdani, a member of the Free Yoruba of Cuba, was sentenced to eight years in prison at the Guamajal Women's Prison in Santa Clara for peacefully demonstrating on July 11, 2021, and for being a parishioner of the Free Yoruba Association of Cuba. He is currently serving a year-long sentence.
He continued:
After years of waiting for a child, Rizdani and her husband met in the hospital ward, and to their surprise, she became pregnant with their long-awaited child. She will soon be entering her 7th week of pregnancy. The state security authorities in Guamayar prison are trying to force her to have her abortion, but she is not given any medical care, kept without food or medicine, and is unable to abort this baby that her couple wanted. I'm forcing you to do it.
“Forced abortions against the mother's will and without clinical reasons are nothing less than murders, a product of state terrorism,” Lalonde concluded.
united nations condemned The study builds on a report released by prisoner advocacy groups in 2022 to investigate the persecution of religious communities under Castro's regime.
The report includes 56 written statements by religious leaders from Cuba's four most popular religions. santeria, Catholicism, Christian Evangelicalism, and Islam. The statement goes on to explain how the communist Castro regime “repressed and controlled religious practices in Cuba in an absolutist manner” and created fictitious organizations in the hands of the Communist Party through the Office for the Attention to Religious Affairs (OAAR). It details what is being done. The case of the Rodriguez Isaac brothers is one of the examples of religious persecution cited in the report.
As of December, Prisoner Defenders Registered There are 1,062 political prisoners in Cuba.
Christian K. Caruso is a Venezuelan writer who chronicles life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
