By Pascal Fletcher
HAVANA, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Cuba's communist authorities, enraged by moves in the United States to delay the return of a shipwrecked Cuban boy, turned their anger on Saturday against the U.S. politicians and Cuban exiles who opposed his repatriation.
Speakers at a mass rally staged in Havana on Saturday by tens of thousands of students and schoolchildren aimed criticism, not at the U.S. government, but at Cuban-American legislators in Miami and their conservative supporters in the U.S. Congress.
A U.S. congressional committee late Friday subpoenaed 6- year-old Elian Gonzalez to appear before it, a move which could temporarily thwart a ruling by U.S. immigration authorities to send the boy back to his father in Cuba by Jan. 14.
The subpoena was filed by Republican Congressman Dan Burton, a close ally of hardline anti-communist Cuban exiles in Miami and a shaper of the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba.
``Mr Burton, you who want to make (Elian) a U.S. citizen, why don't you worry first about helping all the poor people in your country,'' student Ernesto Fernandez told a huge crowd gathered at the Ciudad Libertad school complex in Havana.
Saturday's rally featured poems, songs and statements calling for the return of Elian and praising Cuban President Fidel Castro. It also hailed the 41st anniversary of Castro's triumphant entry into Havana in the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
The subpoena filed by Burton was the latest twist in a six- week custody fight over Elian which has inflamed already scarred U.S.-Cuban ties and triggered a war of words between Cuba's communist leadership and its exile enemies in Florida.
Burton was also singled out for criticism Friday at another mass protest held at Cardenas, the hometown of Elian, who was rescued at sea Nov. 25 after surviving a disastrous illegal migration bid in which his mother and 10 other Cubans drowned.
Cuba's National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, who addressed the Cardenas rally on behalf of Castro, recalled that Burton was the co-author of the controversial 1996 Helms-Burton Law which seeks to tighten the 38-year-old U.S. economic embargo against the island.
``(He is) the co-athor of that annexationist law, which among other things causes suffering and hardships for our children,'' Alarcon said.
Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who was recognised in a Wednesday ruling by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service as the legitimate father and custodian of the child, also condemned the moves by Burton to call his son and himself to appear before the congressional committee.
``I don't know what right that gentleman has, if indeed he deserves to be called that,'' Gonzalez said after tearfully thanking Cuba's people for their support at the rally.
Talking to reporters late Friday, Gonzalez made clear he had no intention of travelling to the United States, either to collect his son or to appear before any panel.
``I'm not going to fetch anyone ... I'm putting my trust in the law, which is one and the same the world over,'' he said, referring to the INS ruling on his parental right of custody.
``They have to return my son to me,'' he added.
Alarcon condemned street protests staged this week by Cuban exiles in Miami against the INS ruling as the work of ``vandals and vulgar delinquents.''
He dismissed them as insignificant in comparison with the campaign of carefully-organised demonstrations held across Cuba over the last month, which involved mobilisation by the government of at least a third of Cuba's 11 million people.
Alarcon, warning his audience against ``maneuvers and traps'' by Cuban exiles and their U.S. congressional supporters, urged Cubans on the island to keep up the mass demonstrations.
This was needed not just to ensure Elian's prompt return to his father and country but also to press for an end to hostile U.S. government policy towards Cuba, he added.
12:36 01-08-00 |