Cuban evangelical pastor and political prisoner Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo is once again facing health complications in the maximum-security prison of Boniato, in the Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba.
Rosales Fajardo’s wife, Maridilegnis Caraballo, told The Washington Stand, “He has not been in very good health these last few days. It seems like it’s the kidneys, he drinks little water and he works a lot in the sun.” Caraballo is asking for prayers for her husband, who is serving his sentence under a regime of maximum severity.
For his participation in the peaceful demonstrations against socialism on July 11, 2021 (known in Cuba as “11J”) in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba, the religious leader was accused of the alleged crimes of attack, contempt, and public disorder, for which he received a sentence of seven years in prison.
Caraballo told the Cuban Human Rights Observatory in December 2022 that there was “relentless persecution” against him, because “when he is adapting to one galley, they move him to another, placing him among dangerous murderers, where insects bite him.”
Caraballo recounted that all this caused her deep depression and visible physical reactions such as the appearance of boils “on the head and the entire body.”
Rosales Fajardo was for years pastor of the Monte de Sion Church, not registered by the socialist regime. He had previously been superintendent of the legal Open Bible Church, from which he had to leave due to pressure from the Office of Religious Affairs of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Early reports of Rosales Fajardo’s detention in 2021 revealed that he suffered torture and humiliation at the hands of the military, who beat him to the point that he lost consciousness and then urinated on his body.
His case and that of other imprisoned religious leaders received international attention when in February 2022 five special rapporteurs of the United Nations signed a letter addressed to Havana.
During and after the 11J demonstrations, the religious group with the largest number of repressed leaders were evangelicals.
