Cuba Summons 3-Year-Old Daughter of Political Prisoner for Interrogation

Leadi Kataleya Naranjo and Idael Naranjo Pérez
Prisoners Defenders
Frances Martel

Communist state security officials issued a summons to a three-year-old girl, Leadi Kataleya Naranjo, demanding she present herself for an interrogation on Tuesday or face criminal charges of contempt.

The case is one of a growing number of incidents in which the communist Castro regime has turned to targeting the children of suspected or openly anti-communist political dissidents. The Communist Party has significantly increased repression since tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets to peacefully demand an end to the regime on July 11, 2021, arresting scores of children and, in some cases, physically assaulting and torturing others for their ties to known opponents of communism.

The incident involving the three-year-old on Monday echoes a similar situation in April in which police forced a seven-year-old girl into an interrogation seeking information about her mother, who had publicly condemned the regime.

The human rights organization Prisoners Defenders denounced the outrageous police action, publishing the official paperwork bearing the letterhead of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior and demanding that the child present herself at her local police station in Havana on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m.

“Not appearing without justifiable cause … will result in a formal accusation of the crime of disobedience [contempt],” the text reads.

Naranjo is the daughter of a political prisoner, 32-year-old Idael Naranjo Pérez, convicted of “sedition” for participating in the July 11, 2021, protests and sentenced to a decade in prison. Naranjo Pérez has staged a hunger strike and various other acts of protest in prison, potentially attracting the police attention to his family. The official summons, delivered to the home of Naranjo Pérez’s mother, did not indicate why his daughter was summoned or the topic of discussion the police expect to raise with her.

“The grandmother was worried; she told them [the police] her age, and even then, they handed over the summons and left,” Prisoners Defenders narrated, citing the family. “The family does not want to take the girl and needs all the support possible so that this insanity gets clarified and stopped.”

The organization, which documents abuses against political prisoners on the island, lamented that “unfortunately, we have seen similar or worse things” in the past, including “children threatened, separated by force from their parents, minors tortured,” and other atrocities.

Yunisleydis Rillos Pao, the girl’s mother, said in a statement to the U.S.-based Cuban news outlet Martí Noticias on Monday that her daughter had just turned three on July 9 and that she feared for her daughter’s safety. Rillos said she would not take her child to the police station and would instead present herself.

“The summons doesn’t say why, but it does say that in the event that she does not present herself, she will be fined, or she will be accused of disobedience, a three-year-old girl,” Rillos said. “I would like everyone to be alert, and tomorrow, when I come out, I will let you all know what it’s about.”

“I am going to leave the girl at school,” she said in separate remarks, “and I will go on her behalf as her mother because my mother was also summoned. … I am not going to make my girl face any of that.”

Speaking to the Argentine news site Infobae, Rillos said she regularly experiences plain-clothed police officers following her and other forms of intimidation, but she and her family would not stop demanding the release of their imprisoned loved ones. She also lamented that the summons had left her mother-in-law in a state of “panic” but insisted she would continue to advocate for her husband and other political prisoners.

“We just demand freedom for our innocents,” she affirmed, “and intimidating us is useless.”

Human rights activists in Camagüey, in the eastern half of Cuba, denounced a similar incident in April when police arrested and interrogated seven-year-old Katherin Acosta Peña, detaining her in a separate room from her mother, anti-communist dissident Marisol Peña Cobas. While Peña Cobas was not allowed to witness her daughter’s interrogation, she later said police threatened and abused her on the grounds that her daughter did not appear sufficiently enthusiastic about Fidel Castro and communism in school.

“They spoke to me first that I had to sign some paper; I told them that I wouldn’t sign any paper because I don’t sign their papers. This is happening to me not because I am not taking care of my daughter,” Peña explained, “but because I don’t teach her to love and respect [figurehead President Miguel] Díaz-Canel and all their spawn.”

Peña Cobas served a month in solitary confinement after participating in the July 11, 2021, protests and was charged with “acts against the normal development of minors” for her child’s lack of revolutionary fervor. Both she and her husband, José Luis Acosta Cortellán, are facing police action for opposing communism, leaving their seven-year-old unable to sleep at night, Peña Cobas said at the time.

“I am a little calmer today, although I did not sleep well last night, but I’m used to that now,” Peña told Martí Noticias, “since after July 11, 2021, the kiddo has the same nightmare every night and gets up in bed shrieking in terror, since then I sleep with her to avoid that she hurt herself.”

Last year, during a series of protests against the regime in Nuevitas, Camagüey, police assaulted multiple girls aged 11 and 12 in public. The girls had intervened in police brutality against their parents, attempting to protect their family.

“I was holding on to my dad, and she was holding on to my dad, and then, to arrest my dad, the police had to hit us,” one of the girls, identified later as 11-year-old Gerlin Torrente Echevarría, said in a video interview that went viral following the protests — and landed the citizen journalist who took it in prison. “I also hit them because they hit me.”

Police also arrested the girls’ mothers after videos of their testimonies went viral on international social media.

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