By Ray Sanchez | South Florida Sun-Sentinel Havana Bureau
7:16 PM EDT, June 18, 2008
Article tools
HAVANA - Cuba is blaming American immigration laws for the deaths of an
11-year-old boy and a teenager during a botched smuggling operation off
the island's northern coast.
The state press and dissident journalists said Wednesday that smugglers
fleeing a Cuban coast guard vessel rammed and overturned a rickety boat
loaded with Florida-bound migrants.
The victims of the failed smuggling venture were identified as Yudersi
Rosabal Rodriguez, 19, of the central city of Sagua la Grande, and
11-yearold Jorge Luis Nunez Sanchez, who hailed from the rural community
of La Sierra. The incident occurred Monday off the northern coast of
Villa Clara province in central Cuba.
The official press said smugglers in a go-fast boat, which was supposed
to pick up the 20 migrants, rammed the wooden boat in order to distract
the approaching Cuban coast guard, which turned its attention to the
migrants in the water.
One survivor said the smugglers, who escaped in the go-fast boat,
charged $10,000 a head for the trip. Dissident journalists said two
survivors were hospitalized in Santa Clara – one woman's arm was severed
by a propeller, another suffered intestinal injuries from contact with a
propeller.
"Once again the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act and double standard of
the American government leads to the death of innocent people," said the
Communist Party daily Granma, referring to U.S. laws allowing Cuban who
reach American soil to remain the in the country. Cubans found at sea by
the U.S. Coast Guard are usually repatriated.
The boy's mother, Vivian Sanchez Cabrerra, was also on the boat and
survived. The state press said she "wept uncontrollably" for the loss of
her only son.
"I held Jorge Luis very close to me," he told Granma. "He was the center
of attention through the whole journey... He was next to me in the front
when the other boat rammed us and we overturned."
In the water, she said, she noticed a lifejacket nearby but her son had
slipped from her arms.
"I never saw him again," she said. "I lost the only thing I had in life."
Dissident journalists in Santa Clara and Sagua la Grande said they had
not been able to locate the survivors.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-618cubadeaths,0,849913.story
No comments:
Post a Comment