Two defectors among Cuba's doctor envoys in Third World
By Chris Gaither. cgaither@herald.com. Published Monday, June 12, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Cuban President Fidel Castro called the recent defection of two Cuban doctors in Zimbabwe ``shameful.'' But the medical relief mission at the center of this embarrassment for Cuba has for years been Castro's most ambitious and successful effort to showcase the fruits of Cuba's revolution on an
international stage.
Dispatched as ``doctor diplomats'' and ``symbols of the revolution,'' teams of Cuban doctors have swarmed across the Third World since 1963, spreading good health and collecting diplomatic goodwill for the Cuban president.
Nowhere is this health care more needed than in southern Africa, where AIDS kills many thousands of people a year. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe secured the 152 Cuban doctors working there during a state visit to Cuba in September.
``In the last three years, medical services in Zimbabwe have gone from adequate -- in the Third World -- to abysmal,'' said Robert I. Rotberg, a Harvard University professor who has studied southern Africa for 40 years. ``These Cuban doctors are essential to prop up a decaying system.''
Noris Peña Martínez, 25, and Leonel Córdova Rodríguez, 31, are awaiting their release by Zimbabwean officials after the United States offered on Friday to give them asylum.
In South Africa, the continent's most developed nation, scores of white doctors have fled since the black majority took power in 1994. The doctors who do stay work mostly where the money is -- treating wealthy whites and Asians in private practice.
MEDICAL IMBALANCE
Sixty percent of physicians cater to only 20 percent of the population, according to Dr. Mark Sanders, a professor of public health at the University of the Western Cape.
Into the void stepped the Cubans, whose work Sanders calls valiant and indispensable. For the last five years, more than 400 doctors have been stationed at tiny clinics in South Africa's rural areas. In the KwaZulu-Natal region, for example, a rural clinic that had been without a doctor since
1993 received four Cubans bearing a preventive health plan and an ultrasound machine last year.
``Many of them are doing a quite good job in very difficult conditions,'' Sanders, who trains physicians in rural clinics, said of the Cubans. ``Here you have doctors working in areas where South African doctors aren't going. If they weren't there, you wouldn't have anyone.''
Despite the Cubans' work, their presence has been received with resentment in South Africa, where, critics say, Castro's longtime support of the anti-apartheid movement shows itself in luxuries and rights not enjoyed by other foreign doctors.
Cuban doctors and their spouses receive free air fare, welcome banquets, several weeks of training, and free housing and transportation, according to government documents. A memorandum obtained by The Herald outlines a long list of goods with which regional health departments must equip each
Cuban's apartment, including a television set with satellite dish, an entertainment center and a pine dining-room set.
THE `RED CARPET'
``We came here during apartheid and catered to the needs of the more oppressed areas,'' said a doctor from central Africa, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing his work visa. ``The Cubans came here and were given the red-carpet treatment and champagne.''
The anti-Cuban movement was bolstered in 1997 by the deportation of a Cuban anesthesiologist, sent home after four patients died when he failed to follow proper procedures.
In the South African press and to colleagues like Sanders, Cubans often complain that their work goes unappreciated. They live in remote areas, use inadequate equipment and receive less money than their peers, yet the medical community and local press have accused them of everything from poor
English skills to medical malpractice.
Dr. Jaime Davis, who oversees the Cubans in South Africa, told a South African newspaper, Business Day, that the doctors sacrifice everything for the medical relief missions.
``How can you compensate someone for living in the bush and being away from family, home and culture for years on end?'' asked Davis, who, like other Cuban doctors and South African health officials contacted, refused to discuss the program with The Herald.
But more than any feelings of proletarian responsibility, Cuba's internationalist missions are prompted by a need for cash -- both by the doctors and by the government that sends them. So argues Julie Feinsilver, author of Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad.
SALARIES DIVIDED
In South Africa, the Cuban government takes 30 percent of its doctors' salaries, which range from the equivalent of $20,000 to $60,000 -- less than their South African peers earn, but several times their salaries in Cuba.
``Today, hard currency is a necessity in Cuba,'' Feinsilver said. ``Those who have access to it, no matter how insignificant the quantity, live better.''
Most Third World countries, however, are too appreciative of the medical aid to question Cuba's motives. High-profile defection cases like that in Zimbabwe leave the recipients of Cuban doctors in a dizzying dilemma: On one shoulder sits the international community with its foreign aid,
demanding a fair hearing for the asylum-seekers. On the other sits Castro with his medical teams. How does a country like Zimbabwe avoid the ire of the former without snubbing the latter?
The case of three Cuban emergency workers sent this year to Venezuela, which maintains close ties with Havana, could be a good case model, according to the United Nations. When those relief workers sought asylum, Venezuela first denied their claim, but later allowed the asylum-seekers to stay
for one year ``for humanitarian reasons.'' It is not clear, however, what will happen to the workers when their one-year stay is up.
Whatever the outcome of the physicians' defections in Zimbabwe, experts predict that Cuba's ``doctor diplomacy'' program will not end any time soon. South African health officials now require recent medical school graduates to take one-year posts in rural clinics, but that program does not
supply the kind of experience that Cuban doctors bring.
``When [doctors] get out to rural areas without all the fancy equipment and fancy tests and chain of doctors above them, they have to have skills,'' Sanders said. ``That kind of doctor, unfortunately, is not being produced by our system.''
Chris Gaither recently visited South Africa and reported from there.
Castro maneuvers to bar 2 doctors' defection to U.S.
By Chris Gaither And Sandra Marquez Garcia. smarquez@herald.com. Published Sunday, June 11, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Cuban President Fidel Castro on Saturday tried to block the departure of two dissident Cuban doctors to the United States, notifying Zimbabwe government officials that his country would issue the pair documents valid to travel anywhere in the world -- except the United States, according to
diplomats and officials in Zimbabwe.
Leonel Córdova Rodríguez, 31, and Noris Peña Martínez, 25, had been expected to fly from Harare to Nairobi on Saturday after the United States agreed to offer the Cubans refugee status. The doctors could have arrived in this country as early as today, but remained
jailed at the Goromonzi detention center after the last-minute snag.
``There seems to be a wrangle going on between the government of Zimbabwe and the government of Cuba,'' said a Western diplomat closely monitoring the case. ``The Cubans are saying that the doctors can travel anywhere in the world, except the United States.''
HIGH-LEVEL MOVES
The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Castro appeared to be trying to steer the doctors to Canada as ``a backlash'' against the international condemnation surrounding the doctors' abduction and attempted deportation back to Cuba.
Asked which governments were handling the latest negotiations, the diplomat said: ``Fidel Castro and [Zimbabwean President] Robert Mugabe. It has reached the highest levels.''
U.S. officials refused to discuss the case, pending a breakthrough in the tense talks.
``This is a case in progress, so I am not free to comment,'' said Bruce Wharton, the U.S. Embassy spokesman in Harare.
Princeton Lyman, a former top-ranking State Department official who served as U.S. ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria, said Castro has no legal right to dictate the asylum process.
NO ROLE FOR CASTRO
He likened the situation to the United States asking Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for permission to take in an Iraqi defector.
``It's not up to the Cuban government. It's up to the United Nations and Zimbabwe,'' Lyman said. ``[The doctors] have gone through and met the criteria, so travel documents shouldn't be the issue. The issue is whether Zimbabwe will let them go.''
Reached at a political rally on his cellular phone, Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba said he was aware of the Cuban government's latest communiqué, but had not read it.
Charamba said the doctors' departure was being held up by ``paperwork'' and ``interface between different government departments.'' He said the country's immigration office still needed to formally advise the Foreign Ministry of the Cubans' travel plans, and the ministry needed to brief the
president.
U.S. INTEREST
``As soon as we open our doors on Monday, that communication will happen,'' Charamba said, noting that the country's immigration laws require the Cuban defectors to leave within 14 days. ``Once that is done, they will be free to leave the country.''
He dismissed the American interest in the case.
``If the Americans had an interest in giving asylum to these people they would have done that when they went to the American Embassy seeking asylum,'' Charamba said.
Charamba said the doctors' defection -- which occurred a month after they arrived as part of a contingent of 152 Cuban doctors on a medical assistance mission from Cuba -- caught his government off guard.
``We were expecting doctors, not social dissidents,'' he said. ``We were hoping that they would help Zimbabwe, not the other way around. Unfortunately, they came to Zimbabwe as a stepping stone. That is precisely why we chose to send them back.''
ASYLUM BID
The two doctors sought asylum at the Canadian Embassy on May 24.
The following day, they gave an interview to a local newspaper criticizing Castro, setting off a chain of events that culminated on June 2, when they were taken from their beds and flown to Johannesburg, South Africa, where Cuban diplomats and Zimbabwean security agents tried to force them
aboard a Paris-bound Air France flight with a connection to Havana.
Air France crew members refused to board the doctors and South African authorities sent them back to Zimbabwe.
Lyman, the former ambassador, compared the standoff in Zimbabwe to a 1997 case involving a North Korean defector in China who sought asylum in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing. China had backed the North in the Korean war, but in recent years had sought improved economic ties with South
Korea.
FACE-SAVING MOVE
After a five-week diplomatic standoff, Chinese officials saved face with both Korean nations by sending defector Hwang Jang Yon to a third country -- the Philippines. He stayed in the Philippines for a month before leaving for South Korea, where he shared some of North Korea's top-secret
military plans.
The Western diplomat monitoring the situation in Zimbabwe said the case is being very closely watched because it could spur the defection of other Cuban doctors working in southern Africa.
``It's a very interesting issue of what will happen down the line,'' said the diplomat, noting that Cubans fear the disintegration of one of their prized assistance programs.
The whereabouts of Peña's father, José Ramón Peña, who for the last year has worked on a similar medical mission in Gambia, remain unknown, relatives said. In an e-mail written before her abduction, Peña told her Miami relatives that her father was due back in
Cuba May 28. His wife told The Herald he remains ``on vacation.''
U.S. gives asylum to Cuban doctors
By Chris Gaither And Sandra Marquez Garcia. smarquez@herald.com. Published Saturday, June 10, 2000, in the Miami Herald
The United States agreed Friday to take in two dissident Cuban doctors who were abducted and jailed in Zimbabwe after making a high-profile bid for political asylum, paving the way for their arrival in this country within days, government officials and diplomats said.
Leonel Córdova Rodríguez, 31, and Noris Peña Martínez, 25, are scheduled to fly today to Nairobi, Kenya, where U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials will designate them as refugees, according to a Western diplomat in Zimbabwe and a U.S. government
official in Washington. The doctors could leave for the United States as early as Sunday.
The decision came after an INS official from Nairobi interviewed the physicians Friday in the Harare prison where they had been detained since Cuban and Zimbabwean officials tried to clandestinely return them to Havana one week earlier.
U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, R-Miami, who had been in touch with U.S. officials in Zimbabwe, said he was pleased with the outcome. ``I hope that these two physicians will soon be able to live in freedom.''
The INS move came two days after the United States forcibly repatriated Cuban baseball star Andy Morales, who was among 31 Cubans intercepted at sea.
Mina Fernández, Peña's second cousin in Miami, burst into tears upon hearing that her relative was safe and would soon be reunited with members of the family. She credited the press, diplomats and strangers -- who offered their support at her Coral Gables bridal shop -- for
attracting attention to the plight of the two doctors.
``Many people have stepped forward for these kids,'' said Fernández, who feared her cousin would end up in jail if deported to Cuba. ``She has a good future here -- in the United States she will study and she can get her medical degree recertified. They have taken so many risks. Thank God
for everything.''
MOTHER'S SUPPORT
Reached by telephone in Camagüey, Cuba, Peña's mother, Noris Martínez, 49, said her daughter had braved great risks in a foreign land. She said she supported her actions ``unconditionally.''
``It's what she wants. It's what she has chosen. I think this will be the best for her,'' Martínez said.
An expert on Zimbabwe said President Robert Mugabe, a friend of Cuban President Fidel Castro, wanted the doctors out of his country before they could do any more political damage. Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee cited the case of the Cuban physicians when it approved sanctions
against Zimbabwe for its deteriorating human rights record.
The two doctors, sent to Zimbabwe on a medical assistance mission with 150 other Cuban physicians, sought asylum at the Canadian Embassy on May 24 and the U.S. Embassy on May 26. Both embassies referred the Cubans to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which helps asylum-seekers find
countries to take them in.
But after leaving a Zimbabwean refugee center to stay with a friend, the Cubans disappeared June 2, the same day of their hearing before the Zimbabwean eligibility committee, a body that hears claims for political asylum. The doctors were taken from their beds and flown to Johannesburg, South
Africa, where Cuban diplomats and Zimbabwean security agents tried to force them aboard a Paris-bound Air France flight with a connection to Havana.
After news of the abduction prompted U.N. and American diplomats to demand due process, Zimbabwean officials granted the doctors ``humanitarian status'' on Friday, U.N. refugee agency spokesman Kris Janowski said. The designation freed the doctors to receive asylum offers from other countries.
Janowski said details of the predawn seizure June 2 required further inquiry.
Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the INS in Washington, offered insight into the status the Cuban doctors had reportedly been granted -- without commenting on the specifics of their case.
Refugee status, which was accorded to 85,000 people in 1999 -- 2,018 of them Cubans -- requires the same standard of a well-founded fear of persecution needed for political asylum. The only difference, he said, is where the application is made.
``When you are a refugee, you are brought here and you are afforded funds to resettle and live,'' Strassberger said. ``It's actually a better package.''
Díaz-Balart, who wrote to U.S. Ambassador Tom McDonald in Harare Thursday to express his dismay over the embassy's handling of the doctors' asylum request, said he was satisfied with the diplomat's prompt response.
U.S. INTERVIEWS
McDonald's letter -- a copy of which was obtained by The Herald -- offered the embassy's first explanation of its intervention into the case ``to set the record straight.'' In it, McDonald notes that the doctors were interviewed by Spanish-speaking embassy personnel. Proper protocols were
adhered to by sending the doctors to the United Nations, he said.
``The United States government cannot grant political asylum to individuals outside its territory,'' McDonald wrote Friday.
He assured Díaz-Balart of his intention to continue pressing Zimbabwean officials to respect their international obligations.
``I will stay personally involved in this matter until its conclusion,'' McDonald stated.
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