An unthinkable slaughter

Juan Garcia would have been 14 years old. Instead, today is the fourth anniversary of his brutal death seven miles north of the Cuban coast on July 13, 1994. Only 10, he was among 72 people so desperate to flee Cuba's repression that they boarded the 13 de Marzo, an old wooden tugboat, and headed north.

What happened to them can be described only as coldblooded slaughter. Survivors related how four newer, bigger Cuban fireboats chased the 13 de Marzo as it left Havana harbor, used high-pressure water hoses to batter them, then repeatedly rammed the crippled vessel with all aboard to make sure that it sank. Altogether 41 lives were lost, some dozen of them believed to have been children.

Full details may never be known. Cuba has claimed that the 13 de Marzo sank after accidentally colliding with the other boats, which Cuba says were trying to prevent its theft. Please! As if theft is justification for murder.

The Organization of American States, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and other human-rights groups have believed the survivors and condemned Cuba. Those who lost loved ones still complain that no attempts were made to recover bodies or to conduct an independent investigation. Not only have none of the authors of the hei
nous crime ever been prosecuted, but crewmen of the attacking boats reportedly were commended for their patriotic ``heroics.''

Yet the world has been shamefully silent on the barbarity that happened on July 13, 1994. ``The time is important because it wasn't all that long ago, not, in other words, in the bad old days of mass arrests and widespread executions,'' as Ted Koppel aptly noted in an ABC News Nightline segment excerpted on today's Viewpoints Page.

Remembering the barbarity of the 13 de Marzo has relevance today, even as respected human-rights activist Elizardo Sanchez is calling for the world to ease pressure on Cuba to see if it adopts democratic reforms. While Mr. Sanchez may be correct that the Cuban state has eased its repression of dissidents, he is generous to assume that this is a deliberate policy.

Fidel Castro has not lost the desire to repress, though the means may well be slipping from his septuagenarian fingers. As even Communist Party militants and loyal military men resort to selling on the black market for dollars, cracks appear in Castro's well-oiled totalitarian machine. But Castro must show better his intent to democratize, offer a better quid. Otherwise any United States pro quo may give him only more resources with which to tighten the screws anew.