Yahoo! July 31, 2000
Cuban Athlete Defects To Costa Rica
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica. 29 (AP) - A Cuban athlete visiting Costa Rica for a sports competition defected Friday, the fourth Cuban from the team to do so in a week, local media said.
Ernesto Diaz Rodriguez, 30, a player on Cuba's indoor soccer team, was receiving assistance from the Costa Rican Human Rights Committee to obtain political asylum to stay in the Central American country, media said.
Players Alieth Garcia, Alain Hernandez and the team's doctor, Gustavo Gonzalez defected a week ago. All emphasized that they do not plan to try to enter the United States.
Government officials have not provided any comment.
The Cuban team is in Costa Rica to compete ahead of the indoor soccer World Cup to be held Nov. 18-Dec. 3 in Guatemala City. The draw is scheduled for August 2000.
Indoor soccer was born on the beaches of Brazil in the 1920s and has slowly spread around the world. It is now played on an international level. Though not an Olympic sport, it has had three World Cups, in 1989, 1992 and 1996, all won by Brazil.
Cuba wins all 12 gold medals in international boxing tournament
HAVANA, 30 (AP)-- Heavyweight Olympic champion Felix Savon led Cuba's sweep of 12 gold medals at the International Giraldo Cordova Cardin boxing tournament Sunday.
It was the 15th title for Savon in this particular tournament, according to Prensa Latina, Cuba's official news service.
Cuba's domination in the tournament was largely seen as an indicator of how the country would do at the Sydney Olympics. Only three non-Cubans qualified for the final day of the tournament in Las Tunas, about 420 miles east of Havana.
Savon outpointed fellow Cuban Odlanier Solis 4-3 in the 200-pound division. Other winners included Maikro Romero (105 pounds), Manuel Mantilla (112), Guillermo Rigondeaux (118), Enrique Carrion (125), Mario Kindelan (132), Diogenes Luna (139), Roberto Guerra (147), Damian Austin (156), Jorge
Gutierrez (165), Isael Alvarez (178) and Pedro Carrion (over 200).
Savon staged a dramatic protest last year at the World Amateur Boxing Championships in Houston, circling the ring with a Cuban flag to protest a decision he and his compatriots said was unfair.
Timour Gaidalov of Russia outpointed Cuban welterweight Juan Hernandez 5-3 in the fourth fight of the night. The Cubans protested, claiming the Russian illegally put tape on his hand wraps. Gaidalov's hand wraps were ruled legal and the Cubans protested on general grounds.
Cuban boxing official Raul Villanueva angrily withdrew Cuba from the tournament, saying four of his nation's fighters had been treated unfairly.
The uniting of two cities. BY T.T. NHU , Mercury News
Saturday July 29 08:47 AM EDT
SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba -- In the same historic building where Fidel Castro made his first victory speech, the unmistakable strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner'' played for the first time in 40 years before Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown signed a friendship city agreement with Santiago de Cuba's
mayor.
While the Thursday proclamation is largely symbolic, Brown and his Cuban counterpart, Nicolas Carbonell y Garcia, expressed hope that it would spawn cultural exchanges and a close relationship between their cities. The Oakland delegation's visit comes days after Congress voted to ease the
40-year-old sanctions against Castro's government.
"Through the friendship of our two cities, Santiago de Cuba and Oakland, we can create something powerful and beautiful and enjoy a friendship people-to-people and city-to-city,'' Brown said.
Oakland and Santiago de Cuba share many characteristics, including a port, a large black population and distinct musical traditions.
"Where the mountains meet the oceans, we will have exchanges of musicians, poets, scholars, painters and those interested in sustainable agriculture,'' Carbonell y Garcia said.
Full story at San Jose Mercury News
Castro Lashes At American Policies
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Write.
SANTA CLARA, Cuba. 29 (AP) - Cuban President Fidel Castro attacked the Clinton administration Saturday for trying to undermine his socialist revolution by increasing contacts between Americans and Cubans, saying the movement cannot be destroyed, "not by force nor by seduction.''
Standing below a huge statue of Ernesto "Che'' Guevara, Castro told more than 200,000 people that the U.S. trade embargo and other American policies aimed at Cuba have only strengthened his revolution. The speech was one of a series of major national events organized to commemorate the
start of the revolution that brought Castro to power on New Year's Day 1959.
The sprawling crowd gathered around the monument dedicated to revolutionary hero Guevara in this central city. Participants, many of them wearing T-shirts bearing Guevara's image, waved tiny red, white and blue flags of stiff paper during the ceremony.
Over the last year, the U.S. government has allowed a growing number of Americans to visit the island for academic, sports, cultural and religious exchanges with Cuban citizens. Proponents of the policy say increased contacts with Americans will expose Cubans to democratic and capitalist ideals.
But Castro, using glasses to read his speech, lashed out at the 38-year U.S. trade embargo and U.S. laws passed in recent years to strengthen it.
"The theoreticians and advocates of the imperial policies still dream that the revolution ... might be subverted with such appealing methods as the one they have called the policy of 'people-to-people' contact,'' Castro said.
Castro said he didn't mind the contact - "but they should play fair,'' he said. The United States should get rid of the trade embargo, as well as migration policies Havana says encourage illegal immigration. They should also allow Americans to visit, do business and invest in Cuba without
restrictions, "without ridiculous fear,'' said Castro, who turns 74 next month.
Among the foreign dignitaries in attendance Saturday was Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, a former California governor who last week visited Oakland's sister city, Santiago, Cuba.
People thronged in the main plaza, which features a towering bronze statue of Guevara. The remains of the Argentine-born physician, who fought in Cuba's revolution, are entombed in a mausoleum behind the statue.
The speech was the second of three major events to honor the 1953 attack by Castro on an army barracks that launched the Cuban Revolution.
The attack was against the dictatorship of then-President Fulgencio Batista. Although the attackers were all either killed or jailed, the movement later regained strength and triumphed in 1959 after Batista fled the country.
The first of this year's events, a Wednesday march, drew a crowd in Havana that the government estimated at more than 1 million. The third event will be a gathering in the eastern city of Pinar del Rio on Aug. 5.
The large gatherings are part of a national campaign to keep up the pressure on the United States to change its policies toward Cuba in the wake of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez's return to the communist island a month ago.
Elian's father and four grandparents attended Saturday's speech in Santa Clara, but the boy was not there.
Elian's Defense Fund Donating Money
MIAMI (AP) - The remaining money in a fund used in the failed attempt to keep Elian Gonzalez in the United States will be turned over to a cancer charity, trustees said.
The Elian Gonzalez Defense Fund collected $210,000 to fight the Immigration and Naturalization Service's order that the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor be returned to his father in Cuba. After seven months of legal wrangling, the courts sided with the INS, and Elian's father took him home June 28.
Once the fund finishes paying off legal expenses next month, the remainder, likely between $50,000 and $60,000, will be donated to the Miami-based League Against Cancer, fund trustee Dulce Cuetera said. The charity helps about 5,000 indigent cancer patients annually, many of them children.
"We picked the league because they are a great charity and they help children and, in this case, it seemed fitting,'' Cuetera said Friday.
The lawyers who argued for Elian's Miami relatives to keep the boy in the United States donated their time, but the fund is reimbursing them for expenses and paying court costs.
Elian was found off the coast of Florida on Thanksgiving Day after the boat he was on with his mother capsized. His mother and 10 others leaving Cuba for the United States drowned during the crossing.
On the Net:
League Against Cancer: http://www.ligacontraelcancer.org/
Cuban Doctor: US Accepting Us
By Kim Gamel, Associated Press Writer.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - One of two Cuban doctors who fled to Sweden after spending more than a month in a Zimbabwe jail said Saturday that the United States had granted them refugee status and they would soon move to Miami.
Leonel Cordova Rodriguez, 31, and Noris Pena Martinez, 25, who were detained in Zimbabwe after they defected from a Cuban medical mission, arrived in Sweden July 8 after the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees negotiated their release.
"Sweden is a very nice place, but I have to go to Miami,'' Cordova Rodriguez said Saturday, adding that both doctors have several relatives and friends in Miami.
U.S. embassy officials had no immediate comment on the case, but a fax from the Washington office of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said arrangements were being made for the doctors to fly to Miami on Aug. 7.
Cordova Rodriguez said U.S. officials gave them formal approval Friday of their refugee status, which will allow them to apply for permanent residency after one year in the United States.
"We feel very happy,'' he said by telephone from the home of one of the Cuban exiles that have been caring for them in a Stockholm suburb.
After the doctors sought refuge in Zimbabwe, both the Canadian and U.S. embassies referred them to the U.N.'s refugee agency. But the Cubans disappeared June 2, the day of their hearing before a Zimbabwean asylum committee.
The doctors accused Zimbabwean security officers of kidnapping them, and together with Cuban diplomats, trying to force them on a flight to Havana. Air France refused to let them board during a stopover in South Africa after the doctors slipped a note to a crew member saying they were kidnap
victims.
The doctors were returned to Zimbabwe and jailed, while the U.N. refugee agency demanded their release under international law. Swedish immigration authorities issued the pair temporary visas at UNHCR's request.
Cuba said the doctors betrayed the medical mission to aid Zimbabwe's health service but denied any involvement in the alleged kidnapping.
Cordova Rodriguez, who said his wife and three children were evicted from their apartment in Cuba and now live with neighbors, hopes his family will be allowed to join him in the United States.
Truck Overturns in Cuba, Kills 9
HAVANA, 29 (AP) - A large truck carrying dozens of passengers left the highway in eastern Cuba and plunged into a 15-foot gully, killing nine people and hurting 70 others, state radio reported Friday.
The accident occurred Thursday night in Rafael Freyre municipality in Holguin province, about 480 miles east of Havana, Radio Reloj said in a brief report. The truck was returning the passengers to their hometown after they attended a circus performance, the report said.
As in many parts of Latin America, trucks are commonly used in rural Cuba to transport groups of people, with the passengers crammed in the back standing up. |