A Cuban pastor living in exile within the United States has accused the Cuban government of cruelly denying him the appropriate to reunite along with his critically sick daughter, as she prepares for yet one more round of surgery in her fight against advanced breast cancer.
Pastor Alain Toledano Valiente, a distinguished leader of Cuba’s unregistered Apostolic Movement, made an emotional appeal on social media this week after receiving news of his daughter’s deteriorating condition.
In a video shared on Facebook, Toledano implored Cuban authorities to permit him back into the country, condemning what he described because the political exploitation of his family’s suffering.
“Her life is in danger over again,” he said, referring to his daughter Susana Toledano Benitez. “I demand my right … to enter my country and to be with my family.”
Toledano has been effectively blacklisted from entering Cuba since being forced into exile in 2022, following years of targeted harassment by Cuban State Security.
He and his immediate family – his wife and two underage daughters – got urgent humanitarian entry to the US a month later after authorities gave him a stark ultimatum on 25 June 2022 – leave inside 30 days or face indefinite imprisonment.
Since fleeing the country, Toledano has been repeatedly barred from boarding flights to Cuba, even during family emergencies.
He says he was prevented from attending a detailed relative’s funeral and has been informed that the Ministry of the Interior’s State Security Department has put out a standing no-entry order against him.
While his younger children were capable of accompany him to the US, his two adult daughters, including Susana, were ineligible for a similar status and have remained on the island.
Just weeks after their forced separation, Susana was diagnosed with cancer – a condition that has since worsened amid Cuba’s nationwide medical shortages.
She is now facing further surgery in a race against time.
Anna Lee Stangl, Director of Advocacy for the human rights organisation CSW, has condemned the Cuban government’s actions, saying that the authorities are continuing to retaliate against Toledano for leading an unregistered religious community — a task that has placed him in the federal government’s crosshairs for greater than twenty years.
She stated: “The Cuban government is seemingly not satisfied with having forced Alain Toledano Valiente and his wife and two younger daughters into exile.
“The authorities proceed to inflict punishment on him and his family for the crime of getting led a spiritual group that the federal government refused to register, forcibly separating them even during moments of crisis.”
She also called on President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Minister of the Interior Lázaro Álvarez Casas to right away lift the travel ban and permit Toledano to return to Cuba to support his daughter during her treatment.
The Apostolic Movement, a network of charismatic Protestant churches, has long faced surveillance, harassments, and threats from Cuban authorities, who’ve refused to grant the group legal status.
Toledano’s case illustrates how the federal government continues to make use of legal and bureaucratic barriers to limit not only religious freedom, but the appropriate to family unity even in times of medical crisis.
As Susana awaits her next operation, her father stays hundreds of miles away, locked overseas he still calls home.
“You must stop playing politics,” he said in his video message. “You must stop fidgeting with the lives of Cubans and the rights of Cubans.”
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