Defend Peoples’ Struggles! Prison is Not a Place for Surgery! Release Celia Flores Now!
ILPS-US stands resolutely in solidarity with the First Lady of Venezuela, Cilia Flores, as she fights against gender based violence in detention and imperialist aggression against her country. We demand the release of President Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores from the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) and their safe return home to Venezuela.
On January 3rd, when Cilia Flores and Maduro were kidnapped from their home in Caracas, Venezuela, Flores was only one month into recovery for a total hysterectomy. When the goons of the U.S. Special Forces entered the premises, Flores fought back against them, was thrown violently, resulting in over 20 stitches and a black eye.
While she was not the intended target of the kidnapping and war crime, she is just as important of a political figure as President Maduro. Her contributions to the Bolivarian Revolution are innumerable. In the 1990s, she helped free Hugo Chavez from prison. In 2006, she was the first woman to become President of the Venezuelan National Assembly. At the time of her kidnapping, she was again an elected member of the National Assembly. Throughout her career, she championed social and women’s rights and has been a staunch defender of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Now, ten months into her horrific detention, Flores is facing the same mistreatment, medical neglect, and state violence that so many women in the U.S. prison system face. Since she was kidnapped in January, she has lost 2 molars and over 25 pounds.
On May 21, the U.S. government tried to force heart surgery on her without her consent. According to doctors, she needs a heart cauterization or heart surgery, that the MDC and Judge Hellerstein assert she can recover from in a prison room where she gets 3-4 hours of sleep a night, while sharing the room with 40 other inmates, and where guards regularly use pepper spray on inmates to discipline them.
On July 29th, she suffered a probable heart-attack and since then, her condition has worsened. On top of this, Flores is being blamed for her declining health despite a sheer lack of transparency, improper medications and inadequate treatment while in detention.
Flores and her lawyers are asking that she be allowed to recover from heart surgery under house arrest rather than a place that will only worsen her condition. Flores should have never been illegally abducted from Caracas! She should have never been put in a position where she's bartering her health as the Trump Administration plunders Venezuela for oil and profit.
As ILPS-US, we stand with First Lady Cilia Flores, just as we stand up for all women impacted by imperialist aggression all over the world!
Every woman has the right to make their own medical decisions. We must fight for Cilia as fiercely as she has fought for the women and people of Venezuela. We know that the end to gender based and medical violence is part of the fight for genuine national sovereignty and to stand in solidarity with those fighting against imperialist aggression.
Release Cilia Flores!
Free Flores and Maduro!
U.S. Out of Venezuela!