• Submitted by: admin
• Politics and Government
• 08 / 23 / 2007

The note cites a recent piece of news published by Reuters news agency last Saturday in which it announced that "Hungary granted political asylum to 29 Cubans held at the US naval base in Guantánamo (...) The US forces held 44 Cubans caught at sea and 17 of them held a three-week hunger strike to protest the conditions of their detention and to demand admission to the United States (...) The United States had been trying to find other countries that would accept them (...) Hungary granted political asylum to 29 of them while the United States would pay for rent, winter clothes and language courses for a year for the 29 (...) Five others would receive US visas and some are waiting for a third country to admit them (...) Many of those detained were opposition figures and would be persecuted if they were sent back to Cuba," the press report said.

The declaration of Cuban Foreign Ministry continues saying that, according to the Spanish EFE news agency, "the Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister, Marta Fekszi Horvath, confirmed the information" while the Hungarian MTI official news agency said that "the decision is the result of a long coordination: the issue was first discussed during talks between US President George W. Bush and Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany on the occasion of Bush's visit to the European country last year."

The note of the Cuban Foreign Ministry stresses that, by not returning to Cuba the illegal emigrants detained at sea, the government of the United States flagrantly violates, once again, the migratory accords signed with Cuba on May 2, 1995, which state that "Cuban emigrants intercepted at sea and those who illegally enter the US Naval Base in Guantanamo, will be sent back to Cuba."

The MINREX declaration notes that, sending those intercepted at sea to the Naval Base in Guantanamo even violates the spurious Agreement for Coal and Naval Bases imposed on Cuba in 1903 in which the United States literally committed to do "everything possible to use those places exclusively as coal and naval bases."

"With this irresponsible decision, the Empire encourages illegal migration from Cuba while it hypocritically expresses its concern about it. While it organizes exercises to face a supposed massive exodus, it fails to comply with its obligations and does not send back to Cuba 16 out of every 100 illegal emigrants intercepted at sea," the note from the Cuban Foreign Ministry reads and adds that "while the US government builds a center for illegal emigrants in the base, it maintains the Cuban Adjustment Act and the so-called wet-foot dry-foot policy, thus encouraging illegal migration."

The declaration accuses the Hungarian government of acting as an accomplice and a lackey of the United States and recalls that, in December 2006, the Hungarian Foreign Minister met in Miami with the anti-Cuba mafia there, where she spoke with the former henchmen of Batista's dictatorship and other terrorists about her experience for a "democratic transition" in Cuba. Then, she received some of these representatives of the anti-Cuba extreme right-wing groups in Budapest.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry notes that these illegal emigrants are neither persecuted in Cuba nor "members of the opposition in Cuba," but people that want to emigrate due to economic reasons and thus - also probably due to their records or their qualification - do not qualify to receive US visas.

The MINREX declaration concludes saying that Cuba will continue building a cultured, pro-solidarity and just society in spite of the maneuvers of the US government and its lackeys.

Source ACN