A Cuban holiday from hell
By Marina Jiménez.
The
Globe and Mail, Canada, June 27, 2005.
Onelia Ross, a Cuban-Canadian, looked forward
to sipping mojitos and swimming in the warm
turquoise waters of the Caribbean during
a trip back to Cuba with two friends in
February.
Instead, she spent five days sitting in
a Havana prison cell, choking down watery
soup and brown rice, wondering how her beach
adventure had turned into every tourist's
worst nightmare.
"They held me for five days while
they investigated the case and they didn't
let me call a lawyer," Ms. Ross said
from her Ottawa home. "It was an undignified
way to be treated over essentially a bureaucratic
mix-up. When you're in Cuba you have no
rights whatsoever."
She also said she was manhandled by her
jailors and suffered bruising and scrapes.
But worst of all was the psychological trauma.
"This is what a police state is like."
The Globe and Mail's calls and e-mails
to the Cuban embassy in Ottawa were not
returned.
But Reynald Doiron, a spokesman for the
Department of Foreign Affairs, confirmed
that Ms. Ross was held in prison for five
days. "We sent a diplomatic note to
Cuban authorities requesting they check
into the allegation of Ms. Ross being beaten
or roughed up and no reply has been received
so far," he said.
Ms. Ross's dual citizenship "may be
a complicating factor" in receiving
a timely response, he said. "However
the treatment of a Canadian citizen as reported
by her is of concern to Foreign Affairs
and deserves a full explanation. We hope
they will provide one."
Ms. Ross, a 47-year-old accountant, has
never been involved in politics or been
critical of Cuba, and left the country 28
years ago when she met and married a Canadian
diplomat who was posted in Havana. All Cubans,
even those with dual nationality, must enter
the country using their Cuban passports,
and Ms. Ross had returned twice without
incident.
This time, Ms. Ross went to the Cuban embassy
in Ottawa and paid $160 to have her passport
renewed.
On Feb. 6, 2005, she flew into Holguin
in Oriente province with two friends, and
was surprised when an immigration official
said her Cuban passport didn't have the
right entry permit. He said she would have
to return immediately to Ottawa.
"He accused me of trying to enter
the country illegally. I said no, that there
must be a mistake," recalled Ms. Ross.
As she argued with the official, the situation
devolved into a shouting match at the small
airport in Holguin, in the west of Cuba.
That's when two Interior Ministry officials
detained her in a room. Her friends had
already passed through immigration and were
unaware of her predicament.
"The security agents tried to make
me agree that I would leave the country.
I refused and asked them to fax the Cuban
embassy in Ottawa and clear up the problem
with the entry permit. Finally, two women
came in and started grabbing me."
They detained her for four hours, and then
told her they were transporting her to Havana
where she would be placed in an immigration
detention centre.
On board the plane, Ms. Ross says she bribed
a security guard into allowing her to call
her family in Havana when she landed.
At the detention centre, she was searched,
and her money and belongings locked up.
"They didn't let me take a change of
clothing or a bar of soap, nothing,"
she said.
She shared a cell with a Cuban-American
who also lacked the proper entry documents,
and a Mexican woman engaged to a Cuban.
The Mexican woman had been denied entry
because officials didn't believe her relationship
with her fiancé was genuine.
"The jail was dirty and there was
no water. I slept on a metal bed. Written
on the walls were the telephone numbers
of all the foreign embassies and notes about
how much the prisoners had suffered,"
Ms. Ross said.
After several interviews, Cuban officials
finally allowed her to contact the Canadian
embassy for consular assistance. Canadian
officials visited her in prison and made
inquiries on her behalf. After five days
she was released and put on a plane to Ottawa.
Cuban authorities kept the $500 (U.S.) in
cash that Ms. Ross was carrying, saying
it covered the cost of feeding her for five
days, and flying her from Holguin to Havana.
Mr. Doiron noted that while Cuba has the
indisputable right to refuse entry to visitors,
Canada is entitled to check up on its citizens
who are taken into detention and allegedly
mistreated.
Once safely back in Ottawa, Ms. Ross said
she asked consular officials at the Cuban
embassy what happened, and they told her
they didn't give her an entry permit because
they assumed she had a special permit that
allowed her to reside outside the country.
Ms. Ross also said she did not check her
passport because she was unaware she needed
a special visa.
"It was an honest bureaucratic mix-up
that could have been resolved," she
said.
Ms. Ross says the experience saddened her
as she realized how terrorized Cubans are.
"They are so scared of the government
and are scared to talk to you. One of the
guards apologized for treating us harshly,
saying he would lose his job if he didn't."
She said she is speaking out now because
she wants the half million Canadian tourists
who visit the Caribbean island every year
to be aware of the country's dark underbelly.
"Canadian tourists don't see what is
going on in Cuba because they're only taken
to the resorts. They don't see the reality,"
she said.
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