BY NAOMI CRAINE
More than 20,000 Cubans detained in concentration camps at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba, will be allowed entry into the United States under an agreement recently signed between Washington and Havana. When the U.S. government began forcibly interning Cuban rafters last August, the Clinton administration declared that these Cubans would never be admitted directly into the country.

Besides setting up an explosive situation in the camps by imprisoning thousands of people indefinitely, the internment of the Cubans became increasingly unpopular among Cuban- Americans and others. Washington eventually had to back down.

Also under the new agreement, from now on Washington will intercept undocumented Cubans who leave by boat and return them directly to Cuba.

Announcing the accord at a May 2 news conference along with U.S. attorney general Janet Reno and Gen. John Sheehan, head of the U.S. Atlantic Command, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Peter Tarnoff said Washington decided to admit the Guantánamo detainees for "the safety of the 6,000 American servicemen" there. Tarnoff declared, "We were moving down a trail where there was distinct possibility of some of those servicemen and some of those Cubans being hurt." In addition, he said, the concentration camps were expensive to run and would have needed $100 million in work to make them more permanent.

Asked by reporters "how explosive" the situation at Guantánamo was, Tarnoff and the others would not give a detailed answer. In fact, since the detention camps were set up last August there and in Panama, the Cuban immigrants have held hunger strikes and protests, and organized mass escapes.

From the beginning, the camps were a powder keg. Reporters visiting at the end of August were greeted with chants of, "It's bad! It's bad!" Less than three weeks after the internments began, 650 Cuban prisoners began throwing rocks at U.S. soldiers after a dispute during a soccer game. These protests overlapped with those of 15,000 Haitian refugees also detained at Guantánamo.

Cubans `not going to tolerate abuses'
A column in the August 31 issue of the Cuban newspaper Granma International noted that Washington had a special problem with the Cuban prisoners because they "are fully aware of what their lives have been like up until now and why; they know what social justice and dignity are, and they are not going to tolerate abuses that they haven't experienced in Cuba during the last 35 years."

Nearly 1,000 of the prisoners returned to Cuba, some by swimming across Guantánamo Bay or crossing the minefields that separate the U.S. base from the rest of the island.

With anger simmering among Cuban-Americans whose relatives and friends were being held indefinitely in the camps, Washington decided in December to admit several thousand of the 32,000 detainees then at Guantánamo on various "humanitarian" grounds. The Panamanian government refused to intern Cubans held in its camps for more than six months, so the immigrants held there were sent to Guantánamo in February. Of the 21,000 Cuban prisoners remaining at the beginning of May, 6,000 women, children, and elderly were already projected to be allowed into the United States at a rate of about 500 per week.

Provocation by U.S. government
The prison camps were set up during the "rafters crisis," which was provoked by U.S. government policy toward Cuba last summer.

Following a series of boat hijackings by people wishing to emigrate to the United States, the Cuban government announced last August that it would not attempt to stop anyone from leaving. Cuban officials pointed out at the time that Washington had encouraged such illegal and dangerous actions by denying visas to those wishing to emigrate while offering automatic asylum to those who left illegally and claimed political repression.

Washington used the situation as a pretext to bar Cuban- Americans from sending money to relatives in Cuba and to tighten restrictions on travel to and from the island. The imprisonment of thousands of Cubans at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo was a direct provocation against Cuba.

In September 1994, the Clinton administration signed an agreement with Havana that Washington would issue at least 20,000 visas a year to Cubans wishing to emigrate; those being held at Guantánamo would not be eligible. So far 6,000 Cubans have been approved for refugee status by the U.S. government, but only 800 of them have actually been admitted into the country. At the May 2 news conference, U.S. attorney general Janet Reno said those admitted from Guantánamo will now be counted toward the quotas for this year and next year.

Overall U.S. policy toward Cuba, including the trade embargo, travel restrictions, and ban on family remittances "remains the same," Reno said. She stressed the Clinton administration's support for the so-called Cuban Democracy Act, initiated by Rep. Robert Torricelli and passed by Congress in 1992. The law tightened the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

Ricardo Alarcón, who was the chief Cuban negotiator and is the president of Cuba's National Assembly, told reporters in Havana May 2, "It is a fair accord that is in the interests of both the United States and Cuba.

"If this agreement is applied fully, then we can practically speak of the full normalization of bilateral relations in regard to immigration," said Alarcón.

Debate over immigration agreement
The decision to return any Cuban picked up at sea directly to Cuba has sparked debate among U.S. politicians and others. Dennis Hays, director of the U.S. State Department's Cuba desk, asked for a job transfer in protest, as did his deputy Nancy Mason.

Complaining that he hadn't been consulted, Jorge Mas Canosa, chairman of the right-wing Cuban American National Foundation, said, "We feel as if the rug has been pulled from under us."

Sen. Jesse Helms chimed in, attacking the agreement. "For over 35 years the United States has been a safe haven for Cubans fleeing Castro's communist dictatorship," he said. Helms, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the sponsor of a bill pending in Congress that would tighten the trade embargo against Cuba, dubbed the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act.

Among other things, the Helms bill would bar countries that buy Cuban sugar from selling it in the United States. That proposal drew criticism from the White House in April. Administration officials said the measure would antagonize other governments and be difficult to enforce. "We want to work with them [the bill's supporters] to make it better," one State Department official told reporters April 28.

Some politicians who voiced support for the agreement took the opportunity to push their anti-immigrant campaigns. Florida governor Lawton Chiles, for instance, hailed the provisions that give Washington the right to send Cubans caught at sea directly back to Cuba, saying his state "couldn't afford-another boatlift."

Sen. Bob Graham, another Florida Democrat, said it "makes it clear that the United States is in control of our borders."

"Cubans who reach the United States through irregular means will be placed in exclusion proceedings and treated as are all illegal migrants from other countries, including giving them the opportunity to apply for asylum," said Reno at the May 2 press conference.

The new accord is a "positive step," said a statement issued by the Antonio Maceo Brigade, an organization of Cuban- Americans who support the Cuban revolution. "We have opposed this cruel and unjustified confinement from the very beginning," the statement said. "We consider the U.S. government to be morally and politically responsible for the illegal entry of any Cuban into U.S. territory, since for 35 years-the United States encouraged illegal departures by Cubans on the island as part of a policy of subversion against Cuba." The Antonio Maceo Brigade called for the Clinton administration to reverse the travel ban, allow families to send money to relatives in Cuba, and end the embargo.  
 
 
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