Video riles Cuban exiles

Posted on Thu, Feb. 09, 2006

CUBAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
Video riles Cuban exiles
Bahamas boycott urged after journalist is beaten at jail
BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

Video of a Miami television reporter attacked by a guard outside a
notorious Bahamian immigration jail is snowballing into a political
crisis for the island government, as Cuban exile groups called Wednesday
for a tourism boycott.

Univisión reporter Mario Vallejo said he received seven stitches just
above his eyebrow Tuesday night after a jail guard slammed his head
against a car bumper, knocking him unconscious for about two minutes.
Among the witnesses was a Telemundo 51 reporter and Cubans who traveled
from Miami to visit relatives kept at the immigration detention center.

Vallejo was in the Bahamas to report on eight Cuban migrants found on
the tiny, uninhabited Elbow Cay last week by the Coast Guard --
survivors in a group in which six others perished at sea and one man was
taken to a Florida Keys hospital for treatment. The Coast Guard turned
over the seven migrants to Bahamian authorities Sunday because Elbow Cay
is Bahamian territory.

''I was just doing my job as a reporter,'' Vallejo said Wednesday. ``At
that moment, I was outside the limits of the jail and my cameraman was
hidden in a taxi.''

The Bahamian consul in Miami, Alma A. Adams, said the government had
launched an investigation into the incident, in which at least two other
journalists were detained by jail guards.

''I'm informed that the reports that have appeared in the media are not
correct, and there is being prepared an update to be relayed by the
Bahamian government to present the facts of exactly what transpired,''
Adams told The Miami Herald, adding she met with representatives of
concerned Cuban exile groups.

SECURITY

In a written statement, Adams added that the Bahamian Ministry of Labour
and Immigration ``has taken great pains to ensure the smooth operation
of the detention center as a matter of national security. The officers
responsible for maintaining order at the center are trained to act
within the law while ensuring the necessary high level of security.''

Last year, The Miami Herald reported that Cuban, Haitian and Jamaican
detainees claimed to be regularly beaten while handcuffed, subjected to
extortion and denied clean water and medical treatment. The situation
reached a flash point in late 2004, when a showdown between Cuban
migrants and soldiers, who guard the camp, ended with the detainees
being sprayed with rubber bullets and a barracks burned down.

Others outside the Carmichael Detention Centre on Tuesday included
Alberto Tavares, a reporter for Channel 51, and family members of other
Cuban migrants.

According to Vallejo and two witnesses -- Zenaida Torres and Luz Karime
Galvez -- family members and reporters had just finished visiting the
Cuban prisoners and had left the jail grounds, where cameras are forbidden.

Vallejo then saw authorities detain Telemundo cameraman Lázaro Abreu for
taping.

Vallejo said he yelled to Abreu: ``Don't worry, I'll call your station
and let them know.''

He picked up a nearby pay phone and called his boss to relay news of
Abreu's detention to Vallejo's competitors at Channel 51.

BLACKED OUT

''At that moment, an official named Smith hangs up the phone, and starts
pulling me toward the jail,'' Vallejo said. ``If he got me in there, I'd
be done for, so I pulled back. Then he threw me to the ground, and
grabbed my head and slammed it on the bumper of a car.''

Vallejo blacked out for about two minutes, witnesses said.

''They grabbed Mario Vallejo and threw him to the ground and kicked
him,'' Torres said. ``He fell on the ground, and he was unconscious.
They didn't want to call the rescue. I had to scream and get tough. That
man was holding [Vallejo] down with his big boot, stepping on him.''

Karime and Telemundo reporter Alberto Tavares began to film the bloodied
Vallejo with a home video camera. Guards immediately rushed them,
demanding the camera, said Tavares and Karime, who was carrying her
1-year-old son at the time.

''My boy fell to the floor and started crying, but the guard didn't
care,'' Karime said.. . . I paid a passing car to take me away because
they were going to detain me with my child.''

`EVERYONE SAW IT'

Tavares said he also witnessed the guard beating Vallejo. Vallejo's
cameraman, Osvaldo Duarte, who filmed the episode from inside a taxi,
was detained, but left his equipment in the taxi. Vallejo said he
recovered his equipment later that night after being released.

''Everyone there saw it,'' Tavares said. ``I saw him hit the ground, and
he tried to get up, but the guard squashed him. What happened to Mario
was very, very violent.''

An ambulance finally came for Vallejo and rushed him to the airport,
where he caught the first available flight to Miami. He was treated at a
Kendall hospital, he said.

Vallejo, Torres and Karime said that Cubans in the detention center told
them that the previous night, a jail guard dragged one of the Cubans
into the courtyard and beat him in front of the others to send a warning.

In 2003, Amnesty International issued a scathing report on treatment of
migrants and refugees at the detention center.

On Wednesday, several Cuban exile groups, including Democracy Movement,
Agenda Cuba and the Cuban Liberty Council, called for a temporary
boycott of all tourism to the Bahamas.

''We're calling on the Bahamas to stop the abuse of prisoners,'' said
Democracy Movement President Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who led a 30-person
protest in front of the Bahamian consul's downtown office in Miami
Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen slammed the Bahamian government: ``I have
met in several occasions with Bahamian authorities and they have always
been unrelenting and unwavering in their unwillingness to remedy these
abuses in any way. . . . Different year, same problems.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13825413.htm