The dozen Cubans, who range from teenagers to adults and include small
families, arrived April 21 in Montevideo after agreeing, in writing, to a
resettlement arrangement worked out between Washington and the Uruguayan
government. The deal gives them stipends and helps them find jobs and
housing.
But Tuesday, the foreign office in Montevideo summoned U.S. Ambassador
Christopher Ashby for a meeting on the reluctance by at least five Cubans
to accept the resettlement, according to an embassy spokesman.
Jose Maria Araneo, director of political and economic affairs for
Uruguay's Foreign Ministry, told the EFE news agency that Montevideo
accepted the Cubans as ``an act of solidarity and for humanitarian
reasons, but now we find ourselves in the middle of a problem that is not
ours.''
``Seven of those Cuban immigrants apparently are agreeing to stay in
Uruguay, to receive American economic help, to look for permanent
residence and work,'' Araneo said. But the ``other five want to return to
Guantanamo, and this matter must be resolved by the U.S. authorities.''
Three among the dozen took part in a hunger strike at the base to
protest their protracted stays at Guantanamo, according to Pedro Solares
of the Miami human rights group Agenda: Cuba. Some people who took part in
the strike had been on the base for more than a year. But Agenda: Cuba was
unable to determine Wednesday whether any of those balking at the
resettlement were former hunger-strikers.
Jorge Acosta of Agenda: Cuba said Wednesday that he had not spoken
with the Cubans spurning resettlement. But he speculated they had hoped
they could swiftly move on to new lives in Miami and realized soon after
they arrived in Montevideo that was not possible.
About 50 Cubans are still being held in a dormitory-style detention
center at the Guantanamo Bay base, where a few have part-time, paying
jobs. Some swam through the bay or walked through Cuban mine fields to
request asylum.
Others were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard, which has government
officials interview Cuban rafters to see if they have a fear of
persecution if they are repatriated. Most are returned immediately. But
the few who make it to the base have their cases reexamined on the island
and, if they are deemed to be subject to persecution, are held on the base
until the State Department finds a third country to repatriate them.
If they are not granted U.S. protection, they are returned to the Cuban
side of the island through a gate in the base's 17-mile barbed-wire
fence.
The Clinton administration created the third-country resettlement
policy amid the 1994-95 rafter crisis to try to convince Cubans that the
only way to resettle in the United States is to apply for visas at the
U.S. Interest Section in Havana.
The State Department's Featherstone said the disorientation of the
migrants was understandable, but ``there is no provision for bringing them
back'' to Guantanamo, which was just a holding station while a third
country was found to take them.
A social agency in Montevideo was helping to resettle the dozen, he
said, and ``the Uruguayans have made a generous offer that meets all the
international standards'' for resettling people who fear persecution in
their own country.
e-mail: crosenberg@herald.com
Cubans: Take us back to U.S. base
Five have hard time adjusting in
Uruguay