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Showing posts with label Illeana Ros-Lehtinen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Illeana Ros-Lehtinen. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Florida Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen says: “It is unconscionable that the Bahamian authorities have decided to forcibly repatriate Cuban freedom seekers back to their brutal oppressors under the Castro regime.”

U.S. lawmaker blasts Bahamas

Calls decision on Cubans ‘spineless’


By Krystel Rolle
Guardian Staff Reporter
krystel@nasguard.com
Nassau, The Bahamas


A Florida lawmaker has branded as “spineless” and “immoral” The Bahamas’ decision to repatriate a group of Cubans last week.

In a press statement posted on her website, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the U.S. representative for Florida’s 27th congressional district, said, “It is unconscionable that the Bahamian authorities have decided to forcibly repatriate Cuban freedom seekers back to their brutal oppressors under the Castro regime.”

Ros-Lehtinen said the Bahamas government took this “misguided approach” despite the fact that Panama had offered to grant asylum to 19 Cuban nationals.

She added: “Cuba maintains one of the world’s worst human rights records, and this spineless decision to send them back is not only unacceptable, it is immoral.”

Additionally, U.S. Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio and Congress members Mario Diaz-Balart, Albio Sires and Ros-Lehtinen wrote a letter to Prime Minister Perry

Christie asking that the government halt any further Cuban repatriations.

At a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration Fred Mitchell confirmed that 24 Cubans were repatriated on Friday.

He said another group of 20 is expected to be returned to Cuba shortly.

Last week, Honorary Consul General of Panama to The Bahamas David McGrath said Panama intends to offer humanitarian exile to 19 Cuban nationals.

However, Mitchell said the government has not received official word from the Panamanian government.

Yesterday, Mitchell also shot down an assertion made by Ros-Lehtinen, who suggested that a video purporting to show Cuban detainees at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre being beaten by Bahamian officers is legitimate.

According to an article appearing in the Miami Herald, Ros-Lehtinen said on Friday that U.S. State Department officials told her that Nassau officials have confirmed the video was real and fired the “guilty guards”.

However, Mitchell said, “The Bahamas has not admitted to the authenticity of the video which the protestors themselves have admitted is a fake.”

The government has been criticized in the past several months for law enforcement officials’ alleged treatment of Cuban detainees.

The Democracy Movement, a group made up of Cubans based in Miami, Florida, launched a series of protests shortly after the video was aired on a Spanish television station in Miami.

The group is pushing for all of the Cubans to be sent to a third country.

However, Mitchell made it clear that only the immigrants who are judged to have asylum status will be eligible for entry into a third country.

He said 18 Cubans fit the criteria. He added that 10 of those appear to have been accepted by the United States and eight appear to be eligible to go elsewhere.

“If Panama makes an offer for the eight then they are free to go to Panama,” he said.

“One of the things that we are concerned about, and we have said this to our friends across the pond, we do not want a signal to go out to the Cubans, who are a potential pool of migrants, that all you have to do is reach The Bahamas and then you get into some country by some artifice,” Mitchell said.

“That would open the floodgates and then it would be a problem that we cannot contain. So we want to make it clear that the laws will be enforced.”

While the video has been branded as false, investigations into the alleged abuse remains under investigation.

“The chips will fall where they may when the investigation concludes,” Mitchell said.

August 19, 2013

thenassauguardian

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Florida Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen protested the Bahamian government’s decision to repatriate 24 Cuban nationals to what she called “the Castro Dictatorship”

U.S. Anger As Cubans Deported To Havana


Tribune242
Nassau, The Bahamas



A FLORIDA Congresswoman yesterday vowed to continue to put pressure on the Bahamian government following the repatriation of 24 Cuban nationals, who were at the centre of a months-long protest and a hunger strike, to Havana, Cuba.
 
The announcement of the repatriation came from the Department of Immigration and follows months of protests by Cuban-American human rights activists in Miami over claims that undocumented migrants have been abused to “the point of torture” while detained at Her Majesty’s Prison and the Carmichael Road Detention Centre in Nassau.
 
Two members of the Miami-based Democracy Movement staged hunger strikes and there were demonstrations in front of the Bahamian Consulate and near the piers where Bahamas-bound cruise ships embark.
 
The protest drew support from members of the US Congress and Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado.
 
The Democracy Movement claimed that the detainees had been beaten by guards, denied access to adequate food, water and medical care, and deprived of the ability to file asylum claims, claims all denied by The Bahamas’ Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell.
 
Mr Mitchell said that the government had not received any specific, credible claims of abuse and no investigation had been conducted. He said officials had looked into a ‘video’ released by supporters of the detained Cubans allegedly showing men being struck by guards in the detention centre and determined that it was “cleary a staged event.”
 
Originally it was thought that the men would be taken to Panama after that country granted the Cuban detainees visas and territorial asylum.
 
Yesterday, Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen protested the government’s decision to repatriate Cubans to what she called “the Castro Dictatorship”.
 
“Members of my staff and have been coordinating with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) personnel who are on the ground in Nassau. The UNHCR officials inform us that the Cubans who are being repatriated may not be the same ones who have been offered asylum in Panama,” the Congresswoman said in a statement.
 
“The Bahamian government has finally acknowledged that the beatings that were caught on video occurred and we hope that the new security cameras, as well as the removal of these abusive guards, will have some positive impact on the lives of these freedom seeking Cubans. It is shameful that because the Bahamian government rejected their refugee status, the State Department policy states that the US cannot take them in after proper vetting.
 
“I will continue to monitor this sad situation and I will continue to press the Bahamian government that it must cease the deplorable detainment conditions under which Cubans are not fed adequately nor treated humanely; it must honour the generous asylum protections offered by third countries, such as Panama and it must coordinate with US officials and the UNHCR so that the present conditions of a lack of information ceases,” she said.
 
August 16, 2013