POLITICS-CUBA: Defecting Doctors in Zimbabwe Accused of Disgrace

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 9 2000 (IPS) - Two Cuban doctors detained in Zimbabwe after attempting to seek political asylum there “have not committed a crime,” but their conduct was “shameful” because they had abandoned their patients, declared the Fidel Castro administration Thursday.

In the Cuban government’s first official reaction to the case, foreign ministry spokeswoman Aymée Hernández strongly denied that the Cuban government had any role in the detention of doctors Leonel Córdova Rodríguez and Noris Peña Martínez.

Córdova and Martínez, who were part of a Cuban medical brigade sent to Zimbabwe in March, decided last week to abandon the mission and refused to return to the island. More than 1,800 Cuban doctors and health specialists are currently providing medical aid in 12 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.

“Cuba has had nothing to do with the decision of the Zimbabwean authorities” to arrest the physicians in a pre-dawn raid last Friday, said Hernández, emphasising that Cuban diplomatic personnel are not authorised to enter homes in Zimbabwe to remove people from the country.

In a written declaration, Hernández stated that the doctors did not comply with their work commitments, “or with labour or migration regulations,” and it is now “the responsibility of Zimbabwe’s authorities to make the decisions they deem appropriate.”

“The Cuban foreign relations ministry categorically rejects statements that these two people are ‘politically persecuted’ or that they run any sort of risk if they decide to return to our country,” Hernández affirmed.

The Miami Herald newspaper reported that the two had been located and interviewed Wednesday by United Nations (UN) officials at the Goromonzi Detention Centre outside Harare.

The US-based daily also said that Zimbabwean authorities had at first denied knowledge of Córdova and Peña’s whereabouts, but ultimately allowed a UN representative to meet with the two doctors for more than an hour.

Zimbabwe’s officials promised to release the two shortly in order to participate in a hearing on their status as refugees, said the Herald on Thursday.

But, based on statements by diplomats and experts, the newspaper pointed out that the Cuban physicians “are not yet out of harm’s way,” because before they can be relocated to a third country, they must obtain refugee status in Zimbabwe, which is “a close ally of Cuba.”

Dominik Bartsch, spokesman for the UN High Commission for Refugees office entrusted with monitoring the situation in Zimbabwe, stressed that its role “in this process is to safeguard the proceedings, but the decision itself is made by the government.”

In earlier editions, the Miami Herald had reported that armed soldiers had taken the two Cuban doctors from their home in the early hours last Friday, just a few days after making declarations denouncing the Fidel Castro government.

According to the story, security agents attempted that same day to return the two to Havana on a flight via Johannesburg and Paris, on an Air France flight.

The Herald quoted anonymous witnesses as saying that, once in Johannesburg, the Cubans had threatened to kill someone if they were forced to board the flight to Cuba. The doctors were returned to Harare after the French airline refused to allow them on the aircraft.

The Cuban foreign ministry spokeswoman expressed her doubts about the credibility of the Herald’s version of events, a newspaper that is traditionally anti-Castro. “Look at where this story originated, in the Herald. And we know that newspaper’s weak points,” Hernández said.

“The ministry of foreign relations want to make it clear that doctor Córdova and stomatologist Peña have shown shameful moral conduct in abandoning their patients in the Zimbabwean village where they had offered their services, but they have not committed a crime,” affirmed Hernández.