By Jim Loney
MIAMI, May 22 (Reuters) - A powerful Cuban exile group Friday urged tourists to boycott the Bahamas during a noisy demonstration to protest the deportation of dozens of Cuban rafters from the Bahamas.
About 60 Cuban-Americans gathered on a busy downtown street outside the Bahamian consulate waving placards and chanting "stop the deportations'' and "boycott the Bahamas,'' a day after the latest deportation of 61 migrants to Communist-ruled Cuba.
Sixty-five other Cubans were deported from Nassau to Cuba Monday, including three baseball players and a coach.
The Bahamas said this week it would adhere more closely to a 1996 immigration accord with Cuba and send back all migrants, rather than allow some to take asylum in third countries.
"We are calling for an official boycott of tourism and commerce with the Bahamas,'' Francisco Hernandez, president of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), told Reuters.
"We feel that the only way we have to let the world know about these crimes committed against these balseros (rafters) is by raising our voice and using our economic power.''
Exile groups claim the Bahamas and the United States violate international law when they send rafters to Cuba because of alleged human rights violations by Cuban President Fidel Castro and his government.
The protesters condemned Thursday's deportations because they came hours after Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Aleman told CANF members Wednesday that his country would accept Cubans held at the Nassau's Carmichael Road Detention Centre.
"They sent them back to Cuba to be put in jail, to be tortured and maybe to be killed,'' said protester Eva Esposito, 53, waving a placard reading "Boycott travel to Bahamas.''
"Not one dollar will they get from the Cuban people, not one dollar,'' she said. "We are one.''
The Bahamas continued to hold 130 Cubans at the Carmichael Road centre and it was not clear whether the offer from Nicaragua would apply to those remaining.
The Bahamas has periodically allowed Cubans to leave for third countries. Perhaps the best known was baseball star Orlando Hernandez, who went to Costa Rica in January and later signed a $6.6 million contract with the New York Yankees.
Hernandez said CANF, a vocal anti-Castro exile group, would urge Miamians to cancel trips, cruises and fishing tournaments in the Bahamas and would announce other measures soon.
A boycott could have an impact on the Bahamas' key tourism industry. Cuban-Americans are avid fishermen and boaters and the nearest of the northern cays in the 700-island chain is just 40 miles (64 km) east of Miami.
Bahamian tourism officials were not immediately available for comment.
"Have Dignity, Cancel your cruise to the Bahamas,'' read a sign held by Augusto Casamayor, 50, a Cuban exile who moved to Miami when he was 11 years old. He said the Bahamian government had deceived the Miami exile community by sending the rafters back after a refuge had been found for them.
"They lied to us and made a deal with Castro,'' he said.
04:49 p.m May 22, 1998 Eastern
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