Cuba won't let our kids leave, medical workers say
Posted on Mon, Nov. 17, 2008 | Miami Herald
By FRANCES ROBLES AND CASEY WOODS
Inside her bedroom on Cuba's Isle of Youth, 7-year-old Daviana González prays to be reunited with her mother after more than five years, relatives say. In Camagüey, Marta Daniela Batista, another little girl separated from her parents, is said to suffer from mental health problems.
The girls are children of Cuban medical professionals living in Miami who deserted their posts in various nations where the Cuban government sent them to help spread ideology and earn income for their cash-starved homeland.
But the price for desertion was higher than the families believed possible: The Cuban government is denying the little ones permission to leave, even though they have U.S. visas that would allow them to come here.
''Marta isn't to blame for what her parents did, and yet they punish her,'' said her mother, Melvis Mesa, 42. ``She's just a child, and children have a right to be with their parents. What the Cuban government is doing is a terrible abuse.''
Mesa and Daviana's mother -- Yaisis González -- are among more than a dozen Cuban health workers working with the Cuban American National Foundation, or CANF, on a campaign to get their children back. CANF representatives plan to file complaints against the Cuban government with international organizations, such as the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations.
A press conference is planned for Tuesday morning to call for other Cuban medical professionals in the same situation to come forward and join their cause.
The Cuban government is ''holding the children hostage'' to punish those who leave official missions, López said.
AFRAID TO SPEAK OUT
Many Cuban medical professionals who have deserted their posts over the years and are struggling to be reunited with their children have remained silent until now in fear that speaking out would further jeopardize their children's release.
''It's the normal mindset to stay quiet. But after a while, when they realize they're not getting anywhere with that attitude, they figure if they make a lot of noise, they might get results,'' said Omar López, CANF's human rights director. ``With the Cuban government, contrary to what most people believe, the more you talk, the more chance you have of getting results.''
González, 34, is a nurse who came to Miami in January 2007 after working three years in Qatar. She compared her separation from her daughter Daviana to the 1999-2000 case involving Elián González [no relation], the Cuban migrant boy returned to his father despite a protracted attempt by his extended family in Miami to prevent it.
''It's basic human right that parents should be with their children,'' she said. ``My child is my child.''
A 2005 report by Human Rights Watch said the Cuban government regularly denies exit visas to medical professionals, children of defectors and relatives of Cubans living abroad legally. Cuba uses the exit visas as a tool for revenge against the disloyal and as leverage to force the return of Cubans who have government permission to live abroad temporarily, the report said.
The report blasted both Cuba and Washington for violating people's ``freedom of movement.''
Experts say taking the issue to an international court would be at best a legal long shot, but would be worth it -- if just for sometimes helpful international publicity.
`MORAL FORCE'
''There's tremendous symbolic value in proceeding before international tribunals, because of the moral force that such proceedings can create,'' said former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, who was part of the legal team that represented the Miami family in the Elián case.
''And moral force combined with consensus of support throughout the hemisphere could be meaningful, but ultimately it would be a verdict that could not be enforced by a judge's gavel,'' Coffey said. ``Ultimately the question is: What tribunal can enforce an order against the Castro government if the Castro government refuses to comply?''
José Cohen, a former Cuban intelligence agent who in 1994 began his fight to get his three children off the island, said he went to Geneva, to U.S. members of Congress opposed to the embargo and everywhere else he could think of, to no avail.
''I never took it to an international court, because I did not have the money, and Cuba does not respect international laws anyway,'' said Cohen, who now lives in Miami Beach. ``But at least it's a public denouncement. They should do it. They should struggle every way they can.''
Cohen's youngest son still lives in Cuba; his daughters, now 20 and 24, left the island on a fast boat to Mexico this year and now live in Miami.
González said she has learned to parent by phone. Her daughter lives with her grandmother on the Isle of Youth.
''She already thinks she's a little woman,'' González said, adding that Daviana often asks for shoes and stylish tops as gifts from the United States.
In their daily conversations, Daviana recites math equations -- ''two-plus-two-equals-four!'' -- and reads passages out of her text books to show her mother the progress she's making in class.
''She does it to show me that she deserves all the gifts she's asking for,'' said González. ``Anything she asks me for, I give her, because it's the only thing I can do for her.''
Mesa, 42, often weeps when she speaks of her daughter in Camagüey.
PHYSICAL THERAPISTS
Mesa and her husband, both physical therapists, said the couple deserted from a medical mission in Venezuela last March and came to the United States through Colombia a short time later.
Doctors in Cuba say their daughter Marta's mental health is suffering because of the separation from her parents.
Sensitive and intelligent -- she's at the top of her elementary class -- Marta cries constantly for her family.
'Sometimes it's hard to even speak on the phone, because she says over and over, `Mama, when are we going to be together?' '' Mesa said. ``It tears up your heart.''
`MORAL FORCE'
''There's tremendous symbolic value in proceeding before international tribunals, because of the moral force that such proceedings can create,'' said former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, who was part of the legal team that represented the Miami family in the Elián case.
''And moral force combined with consensus of support throughout the hemisphere could be meaningful, but ultimately it would be a verdict that could not be enforced by a judge's gavel,'' Coffey said. ``Ultimately the question is: What tribunal can enforce an order against the Castro government if the Castro government refuses to comply?''