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Shots at Cuban boat off
Fla. Criticized
Florida
Today, July 11,
2006.
HAVANA -- A leading Cuban rights group
criticized the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday
for firing shots at the engine of a boat
overcrowded with U.S.-bound migrants during
a confrontation that killed one woman and
injured several other people off the Florida
Coast.
"We cannot understand why they were
firing with weapons of war against a small
civilian craft," Elizardo Sanchez of
the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and
Reconciliation said in a statement distributed
to international news media here.
A woman relatives identified as 24-year-old
Anei Machado Gonzalez died of blunt force
trauma consistent with striking her head
on the boat during the Sunday confrontation
off the Florida coast, according to preliminary
autopsy results.
No one was struck by the shots fired to
disable the engine. The U.S. Coast Guard
said it opened fire after the migrant-filled
speedboat ignored orders to stop and repeatedly
tried to ram their vessels.
"The violence of this interception
led to this tragedy and the case should
be investigated," the rights commission
said.
Cuban Coast Guard officials in April said
that they shot a suspected migrant smuggler
off the island coast's when he refused their
orders to stop. Two other people on the
craft were wounded.
"The governments of Cuba and the United
States must take all measures to stop shooting
against small unarmed boats," the rights
commission said.
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