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By JESSICA ROBERTSON
Associated Press Writer
NASSAU,
Bahamas (AP) - The Bahamas prepared Monday to send home 100 Cuban boat people,
including three baseball players.
The move comes even as United States-based Cuban exiles try to get visas for
their compatriots.
``He was told that they were being repatriated. ... That would kill me,''
Nora Espinoza told The Associated Press about her 19-year-old son, Abdel Alfonso
Espinoza, a detainee.
She said he called her in Miami to say that guards had read off the names of
about 70 Cubans, including the ballplayers, and put them on a bus.
``While I was talking to him, a guard came and took the phone away from
him,'' Espinoza said.
The Miami-based baseball scout Joe Cubas, a Cuban exile, said he was
``getting close'' to acquiring visas for all the Cuban refugees at the center
outside Nassau, capital of the former British colony.
``It would be ironic for this to happen just as we're making progress. We
will plead with the Bahamian government to give us some more time,'' Cubas said
through his spokeswoman, Rene Guim.
Cubas may be too late.
Vernon Burrows, deputy director of immigration for the islands, told the AP
Sunday night that all the Cuban detainees would be repatriated ``soon, very
soon.'' He refused to confirm rumors that the first would go today.
He said about 60 would be sent home first and another 60 later in the week.
Hundreds of Cuban refugees set sail from Cuba each year, propelled by ocean
currents that carry them to the Bahamas.
Cubas started trying to get visas for all the detained Cubans when dozens
went on hunger strike in April, objecting that baseball stars easily get asylum
while ordinary Cubans are sent back home.
The Bahamas allows refugees to move to countries that give them visas
despite a 1994 repatriation agreement with Havana.
Cubas, the scout, said one of the reasons for the delay was that Costa Rica,
which welcomed dozens of Cubans last year, got a new conservative government
last month.
At New Year's, Costa Rica gave asylum to Orlando ``El Duque'' Hernandez, who
signed a $6.6 million contract with the New York Yankees.
Four prominent baseball players and a coach followed in Hernandez's
footsteps in March: first baseman Jorge Luis Toca, 23; catcher Angel Lopez, 25;
second baseman Jorge Diaz, 23, and Michael Jova, a 17-year-old shortstop from
Cuba's junior Olympic team, plus pitching coach Orlando Chinea, 41.
All were banned from Cuban baseball last year because Cuban officials
suspected they were planning to defect.
The Bahamas refused to grant political asylum to the group last week. The
government said interviewers from the U.N. High Commission on Refugees did not
believe the group had been victims of political persecution in Cuba.
Since El Duque defected, Cuba did not respond to requests to speed up
repatriation until Bahamian officials visited Havana two weeks ago. The last
Cubans were repatriated from the Bahamas on Dec. 27.
There has been a wave of defections in recent years by Cuban athletes. While
top athletes receive favored treatment in Cuba, their salaries run about $10 a
month.
After Toca fled, Cuba's only daily newspaper charged there was a ``global
strategy'' to encourage baseball stars to leave to undermine its socialist
system.
The Cuban government has permitted some Cuban players to legally join
professional leagues in Japan, Europe or Latin America after they retired from
Cuban sports, but it announced recently that it was stopping that practice.
Other players who defected in recent years include Hernandez' half-brother
Livan of the Florida Marlins and major leaguers Rene Arocha, Osvaldo Fernandez,
Rey Ordonez, Ariel Prieto and Rolando Arrojo.
AP-NY-05-18-98 0404EDT
Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. |