Published Thursday, June 22, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Zimbabwe must release Cuban doctors
Their "crime'' was to seek asylum from Cuba's repressive regime.
The two Cuban doctors haven't broken any law. Yet Leonel Córdova Rodríguez and Noris Peña Martínez have been jailed for 19 days in Zimbabwe. Their ``crime'' was to seek asylum from Cuba's repressive regime, which has spared no dirty trick to keep them from freedom.
Now Zimbabwe's equally reprehensible government is turning the screws on these doctors, refusing to release them and treating them to increasingly harsh detention conditions in flagrant disregard of internationally protected human rights.
``It's gone beyond anguish,'' Dominik Bartsch, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told The Herald last week when Drs. Córdova and Peña weren't freed as was expected on Friday.
Commendably, local officers of the U.N. refugee agency have taken pains to help the Cuban doctors. After the apparent attempt by Cuba and Zimbabwe authorities to deport forcibly the doctors back to Cuba failed, the UN agency found where they were being detained, validated their legitimacy as
refugees, has visited them daily, brought food and sought to persuade diplomatically Zimbabwean authorities to turn them over.
Diplomacy, reason and international standards, however, make little difference to the Cuban and Zimbabwean governments, both masterful violators of human rights. That became explicit after the United States rightfully offered Drs. Córdova and Peña safe haven. Cuba's Fidel Castro
sent an outrageous command, tyrant to tyrant, to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe: Don't release the doctors to the United States.
Mr. Mugabe, longtime Castro friend and irer, now is risking international embarrassment to ignore the Cuban doctors' plight and the concerns of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Meanwhile, Mr. Mugabe has his hands full fighting off a political challenge in parliamentary elections this
weekend. Dozens of people, mostly from the opposition, have been killed in election-related violence. At the same time, government-backed squatters have seized some 1,500 white-owned farms, fanning racial violence.
``Zimbabwe is a black man's land, and a black man will determine who gets it,'' Mr. Mugabe declared in a campaign speech last week.
Countries don't need natural disasters when they have heads of state like Mr. Mugabe and Castro. Both must be condemned for their abuses of human rights, and Zimbabwe pressured until it releases Drs. Córdova and Peña to officers of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |