MIGRATION-CUBA:
Mothers Face Legal Action for Risking Children's Lives
Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, (IPS) - Cuban parents who endanger the lives of their children in an attempt to leave the island face stiff penalties under a law that protects children. Seven Cuban women are currently in custody facing legal proceedings for that reason.

"The legal action is based on their failure to live up to their legal responsibilities as the parents or guardians of minors, not on the fact that they were caught trying to leave the country illegally, which for years has not been classified as a crime in this country," retired jurist Carlos Manuel Jiménez explained to IPS.

An expert on child rights, Jiménez pointed out that Cuba adopted a Code on Children and Youth in 1978 and that the latest reform of the penal code incorporated penalties for the trafficking or sexual exploitation of minors and for those who induce a minor under their custody to leave home or drop out of school.

In Cuba, education is compulsory up to the ninth grade, and minors under the age of 17 are not allowed to work.

The priority that the Cuban state puts on children was recognised by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in its report on The State of the World's Children 2006.

"In virtually every crime, it is considered an aggravating factor if the victim is a minor," said Jiménez.

He noted that at the peak of the economic crisis in Cuba in the 1990s, the government eradicated panhandling by children by announcing tough sanctions for parents of children who "beg for money, candy or anything else" in the street.

For the government, "the life of a child is the top priority, and no one can endanger that with impunity," states a communiqué issued Monday after the announcement that legal action would be taken against the seven women who exposed their children to "grave dangers to their health and their lives" early this month.

The government statement adds that "Once again, it has been shown how irresponsible and unscrupulous individuals are exposing their children to a double danger: drowning during the journey or becoming ill due to the inhospitable means generally chosen by traffickers."

The decision followed an incident that occurred on Apr. 5, when Cuban coast guards intercepted a speedboat that was getting ready to smuggle a group of Cubans out of the country, south of the province of Pinar del Río, 140 km from Havana.

The official report published in Havana indicated that the coast guards opened fire on the boat when the crew disobeyed orders to stop and instead rammed one of the patrol boats.

Two of the smugglers, both of them Cuban-Americans, were injured. A third, Geovel González, was killed. González was a Cuban citizen who himself left the island for Mexico on Mar. 14, and had come back in the same speedboat to help pay off his debt to the migrant smugglers.

On the shore, local authorities picked up a group of 39 Cubans who were waiting for the speedboat, including 14 women, and seven children between the ages of 23 months and 14 years.

To reach the remote spot on the coast, the 39 would-be migrants, who came from five different provinces in Cuba, had to hike long distances through mosquito-infested swamps, and remained with no food or water in that damp, harsh environment from noon on Monday Apr. 3 to before dawn on Wednesday Apr. 5.

Several received medical assistance on the spot, and two of the children - ages three and 11 - were taken to a hospital for emergency treatment, with symptoms of dehydration and contamination, said official sources.

"As a result of their parent's irresponsibility, all of the minors required hospitalisation," said the report published in Granma, the daily newspaper of the ruling Communist Party. "When they were left without any water reserves, several had to drink lake and swamp water. Their own relatives stated that had they not been rescued, the children could have lost their lives."

The government of Fidel Castro has not specified the penalties faced by the seven women. This is the first time since Cuba and the United States signed migration accords in September 1994 and May 1995 that anyone taken into custody during an attempt to leave the island without permission will be brought to court.

In the agreements, Washington pledged to repatriate any Cubans intercepted at sea in an attempt to reach the United States, while Havana agreed not to take reprisals against those who try to leave the country without committing other offences like the hijacking of boats.

Up to then, leaving the country without permission was a crime punishable by years in prison.

Under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, Cubans are eligible to apply for residency one year and one day after they set foot on U.S. soil. But the Cuban government complains that the U.S. law encourages Cubans to risk the 90-mile sea journey to Florida and violates the migration accords signed by the two countries.

The United States, on the other hand, insists that it is the lack of political freedom in Cuba as well as economic difficulties that force Cubans to flee their country.

The number of Cubans attempting to make it to the United States continues to mount. The U.S. coast guard reported that in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2005, it had intercepted 2,712 Cubans at sea, more than twice the previous year's total and one of the largest numbers since the August 1994 exodus by some 30,000 Cubans.

According to El Nuevo Herald, published in Spanish in Miami, Florida, during the fiscal year that ended in 2005, 2,530 Cubans made it to U.S. shores and were granted asylum, while 7,610 entered the United States by land, over the Mexican or Canadian borders.

The U.S. coast guard reports that only 2.5 percent of Cubans intercepted at sea receive asylum in the United States

According to official sources in Cuba, the immense majority of Cubans who attempt to make it to the United States illegally have relatives there, do not qualify for consideration as legal immigrants, feel that they have no hope of winning one of the several thousand visas issued by the United States in Cuba every year, or are too impatient to wait for that lengthy process to be completed.

At least 18 individuals have died so far this year in unauthorised attempts to leave the island, and 42 lost their lives last year, according to official figures.

In August 2005, 31 drowned when their 28-foot speedboat sank north of Matanzas, Cuba. And in another case, a young Cuban woman was given asylum after she risked her life by shipping herself in a small wooden crate aboard a cargo plane from the Bahamas to Miami.

Studies carried out in Cuba have found that at least 15 percent of those who risk the hazardous journey across the Florida Straits die in the attempt.

There are no reliable figures on how many minors have made the journey or have drowned in the Florida Straits in the past few decades. But cases appear year after year, often involving small children.

"You have to be crazy or truly desperate to drag a small child along on an adventure like that," said Caridad Martínez, a resident of Old Havana, after hearing a televised interview with one of the mothers under arrest. "The saddest thing is that these people almost always regret what they have done, but sometimes when it is too late."