[NYTr] USA's Cuban Adjustment Act costs lives

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Granma International - Dec 28, 2007 (posted Dec 31, 2007)
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/diciembre/vier28/ajuste-i.html


Cuban Adjustment Act costs lives

CUBA condemned Thursday the policies of the United States that incite
illegal emigration by residents of the island to that country, with
resulting human fatalities, as occurred this past December 22.

Cuban Adjustment Act costs livesAccording to a communication from the
Ministry of the Interior, read out yesterday on the Cuban “Roundtable”
TV program, two Cubans perished on Saturday, December 22 after the
speedboat in which they were attempting to leave the country capsized
one kilometer off the northern coast of Havana province.

Autopsies performed at the Legal Medicine Institute in the capital
determined that Yosvani Vera Alvarez, aged 29 and Zuleika Rodríguez
Pérez, 43, died from drowning.

The text also reported that another nine citizens, women and children
among them, who boarded the boat that came from the United States  for
the purposes of human trafficking, managed to reach the shore alive.

The survivors said that as soon as they embarked, water began to leak
into the boat which also had problems with one of its two engines.

This situation required their return to land within a few minutes.
However, the speedboat, manned by two crewmen, changed direction
abruptly, turned over and began to sink, stern first.

Cuban authorities are searching for the two crew members, who
apparently managed to escape into Cuban territory after abandoning the
shipwrecked immigrants.

At the same time, the communication concludes, investigations are
continuing into this unfortunate accident whose root cause is the
murderous U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act, which incites illegal emigration
and the lucrative activities of the Cuban American mafia in South
Florida.

Translated by Granma International