POLITICS-CUBA/US: Fallout from Hijacking Shakes Migration Talks

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Sep 21 2000 (IPS) - The case of “air piracy” that has prompted a loud condemnation from Cuba is complicating the new round of talks with the United States on migration issues, a two- day meeting that began Thursday in New York.

One of the worst things about the hijacking of the Cuban airplane is that it occurred just 48 hours before the migration negotiations, commented ‘Granma’ newspaper, the voice of the governing Communist Party of Cuba.

The small crop-dusting aircraft was stolen Tuesday in the northwestern province of Pinar del Río and went down in the Gulf of Mexico with 10 illegal Cuban emigrants on board. Nine survived the crash.

‘Granma’ confirmed that Ricardo Alarcón, president of the island-nation’s parliament, left Wednesday for New York to meet with US State Department representative William Brownfield to evaluate the status of and compliance with the bilateral accords on migration signed in 1994 and 1995.

But Tuesday’s events have created a tense climate for the already difficult talks. The Soviet-made plane fell into the sea 80 km off the Cuban coast as the pilot headed the aircraft towards Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

The US Coast Guard took the survivors of the crash to Key West for medical treatment and to transfer them over to the custody of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), according to sources in the Florida archipelago.

The Cuba-US meeting was originally slated for July, according to the calendar of semi-annual evaluation talks established under the migration agreements, which the two countries signed in response to an exodus of illegal Cuban emigrants to the United States.

The postponement of the meetings until now was due in part to the refusal of the US delegates to include discussion of the Cuban Adjustment Act on the agenda, a US law that allows Cubans to obtain residency after just one year in the country, even if they entered the United States illegally.

“Cuba will honour its word and its declared purpose of conducting serious discussions about the severe migration problems that have been created between the two countries, and expects a reciprocal attitude from its North American counterpart,” says ‘Granma.’

Cuba’s President Fidel Castro asserts that Adjustment Act, enacted in 1966, encourages the clandestine emigration of Cubans to the United States and the enrichment of those who own boats, who charge as much as 8,000 dollars for every person they transport to Florida.

According to Havana, the United States also promotes illegal emigration from the island by not applying sanctions against those who hijack Cuban aircraft or boats – acts that often involve violence and result in murder – in order to reach the US coast.

There are 68 people behind bars in Cuba for migrant smuggling charges, according to the latest official reports.

The island’s penal code establishes prison sentences of seven to 15 years for anyone organising or abetting the unauthorised emigration of Cuban citizens.

The punishment can reach 20 years and even the death penalty for those who “remove, steal or appropriate a boat or aircraft, diverting it from its route or interfering with its normal activities.”

The island’s authorities considered Tuesday’s hijacking of an aircraft normally used to fumigate and fertilise rice paddies to be “an act of piracy.”

As aggravating factors, Havana officials pointed to the fact that the incident resulted in the death of one of the plane’s passengers – whose identity is still unknown -, “grave and perhaps irreversible” injuries suffered by another, and that it endangered the lives of three women and three children, ages six, seven and 13.

The official newspaper charges Rodolfo Fuentes Fernández, who is recovering from serious injuries in a US hospital, with “harmful influence” in the “irresponsible actions” of the plane’s pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias.

‘Granma’ explained that Iglesias has no known criminal record, that his work history is commendable and that he comes from a “revolutionary” family, which is evident “in the name they gave him at birth (Lenin).” Cuban justice tends to take such elements into account at trial time.

The migration accords require the United States to repatriate all illegal Cuban emigrants intercepted at sea, though sources close to the island’s Judiciary indicated they were sceptical that the United States would comply in the case of the survivors of Tuesday’s plane crash.

Cuba and the United States signed an agreement in 1973 condemning the hijacking of aircraft. But Castro denounced the accords in 1977 as a consequence of a hijacking that cost the lives of 73 passengers.

The last case of hijacking in Cuba, prior to Tuesday, took place in August 1996, when three people who wanted to reach the United States forced an air-taxi to deviate from its course.

The pilot returned to the island, while the passengers were declared innocent of hijacking and obtained political asylum in the United States.