In his speech, the Cuban president de tailed many of the facts on the hijackings that have accelerated in the last eight months and the U.S. government’s role in encouraging them by refusing to send the perpetrators back to Cuba or prosecute them in the United States. By limiting visas and wielding the Cuban Adjustment Act, Castro said, Washington provokes these incidents, pushing Cubans to leave the island by jumping on rafts, paying smugglers from Florida to pick them up, and other similar means.

Approved by the U.S. Congress in 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act encourages people to leave Cuba for the United States by providing virtually automatic asylum to any Cuban who lands on Florida’s shores, regardless of crimes they may have committed to get there, and offering them expedited permanent residency status. It is one among a host of hostile policies Washington has directed at the Cuban people for more than four decades. These measures have included bombings, sabotage, scores of assassination attempts against Castro and other Cuban leaders, and an economic war that continues to this day, the Cuban president said.

Three planes and four boats have been hijacked since last August in seven different incidents, Castro pointed out. "We had to act radically to curtail this wave of hijackings, which was shown to be in full bloom by the events that took place after the hijacking of the DC-3 on March 19," he continued. Since the takeover of that flight, authorities had evidence of 29 plans to hijack aircraft and vessels, "something that had not happened in many years," Castro noted. "Definitely, we could not hesitate in applying the sentences handed down by the courts and upheld by the Council of State in the case of the hijackers of the Baraguá ferry." That incident took place April 2.  
 
Trials and convictions of 75
In his presentation, Castro referred to televised remarks he had made on April 4 regarding the activities of James Cason, chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana since last fall.

The two governments have not had diplomatic relations since Washington broke them off in January 1961, as part of the U.S. rulers’ response to the victory of the 1959 revolution, when Cuba’s toilers brought down the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and rapidly installed a government defending the interests of workers and farmers. When the property interests and prerogatives of the wealthy U.S. families and local capitalists and landlords were affected by democratic measures such as a land reform, Washington adopted the course it has followed for more than 40 years of attempting to overthrow the revolutionary leadership and roll back the gains of Cuba’s working people.

Today, each government’s diplomatic personnel operates out of an Interests Section, hosted formally by a third country.

"Nobody is unaware of the fact that Mr. Cason, new chief of the Interests Section, came with instructions to carry out all sorts of provocations against Cuba, and that he has attempted to transform his diplomatic headquarters and his own residence into a venue for organizing, instructing, and directing mercenaries who betray their homeland in the service of a foreign power, or violate other laws through acts that cause serious harm to the country, expecting total impunity," Castro said April 4. "Several dozen of them are now standing trial in the courts that deal with crimes against national security."

The trials Castro was referring to were held April 3–7. Seventy-five opponents of the Cuban Revolution were found guilty and sentenced to terms from 6 to 28 years in jail. Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, said at an April 9 press conference that Cuban authorities indicted the 75 on criminal charges brought by government prosecutors for violations of the Cuban Penal Code and Law 88, known as the Act for the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy of Cuba.

This law stipulates, among other things, prison terms for any individual who "gathers, reproduces, [or] disseminates subversive material from the government of the United States of America, its agencies, representative bodies, officials, or any foreign entity to support the objectives of the Helms-Burton Act."

Cuba’s National Assembly adopted this law in 1999 in response to efforts by Washington to implement the so-called Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, also known as the Helms-Burton law, after its initial congressional sponsors. The passage of the "Liberty" act in 1996 registered a significant escalation of the U.S. government’s economic war on the Cuban people at the time, and a simultaneous trade offensive by the U.S. rulers against their imperialist allies, especially in Europe and Canada, who have had growing investments in Cuba.

In recent weeks, Cuban officials have described some of the evidence presented to the courts on which the convictions were based.

The evidence included receipts and bills showing that some of the defendants had received funds and other material aid from U.S. diplomats or officials of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) ranging from $30 to more than $7,000. USAID is one of the institutions described in the Helms-Burton law as responsible for channeling financial and other material aid to opponents of the Cuban government calling themselves "human rights" activists, "independent librarians," and similar designations. A number of Cuban state security agents who had infiltrated the counterrevolutionary groups working with U.S. government officials testified against the defendants, detailing their activities.  
 
U.S. policy of provocations
Since the arrival of James Cason in Havana on Sept. 10, 2002, as the new head of the U.S. Interests Section, Cason has used his offices there and his residence to hold dozens of meetings with Cubans organizing against the revolutionary government, Castro said. Cason also traveled extensively throughout the island--from Villa Clara to Ciego de Avila and the eastern provinces of Las Tunas, Holguín, Granma, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantánamo--where he held similar encounters, Castro reported. Cason touted publicly his "6,000-mile" plan to crisscross the country.

At an increasing number of these events, Washington’s man in Havana gave interviews to the national and international press, openly describing his objectives. He also frequently stopped in Miami during visits back home, where he met with groups like the Cuban-American National Foundation and the Council for the Freedom of Cuba. The latter is a paramilitary group that has carried out armed attacks against Cuba from U.S. soil.

During a December 21 visit to Miami, Cason was interviewed on TV Channel 51, where he stated that the "dissidents" he was meeting with in Cuba live "in a military dictatorship, and if people don’t meet together, they won’t have much chance of prospering."

On February 24, Cason gave a press conference during a gathering at the apartment of Martha Beatríz Roque, an opponent of the Cuban Revolution who was among the 75 convicted of collaborating with Washington’s campaign of subversion. The event was organized to commemorate, among other things, the anniversary of the 1996 shootdown by the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force of two planes flown from Florida into Cuban air space by pilots belonging to Brothers to the Rescue.

These pilots had repeatedly violated Cuba’s airspace and refused to heed warnings to leave. Brothers to the Rescue is a counterrevolutionary group whose leaders took part in the 1961 U.S.-organized mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs, and numerous other armed actions against Cuba carried out from U.S. soil, with Washington’s complicity.

"Sadly, the Cuban government is afraid of freedom of conscience, afraid of freedom of expression, afraid of human rights," Cason told the press at the February 24 event, according to the Cuban government’s transcript. "This group," he continued, pointing to Beatríz Roque and other opponents of the Cuban revolution gathered there, "is demonstrating that there are Cubans who are not afraid. They know that the transition to democracy is underway. We want them to know that they are not alone."

At an April 7 appearance at the University of Miami, Cason declared, "all of our allies agree that their policy goal in Cuba is, ultimately, the same as ours: the rapid and peaceful transition to a democratic government characterized by strong support for human rights and an open market economy."  
 
A string of seven hijackings
Washington’s policy and Cason’s actions have encouraged a string of seven hijackings since last August and numerous other attempted hijackings the Cuban authorities have foiled, Castro stated.

Even before Cason arrived in Cuba, Castro said, "on Aug. 6, 2002, five individuals hijacked a boat called the Plástico 16, based in La Coloma, Pinar del Río." The Cuban authorities officially submitted a request to Washington to return the perpetrators to Cuba. "Months later, the five hijackers were released in the United States," Castro stated.

The second hijacking took place November 11, when an AN-2 crop duster plane was commandeered to the United States. After another request by Havana that those responsible be extradited, "The U.S. authorities did not even press charges against the hijackers, who were released four days later. The plane was seized, auctioned off, and in fact stolen, in an open and obvious anti-Cuba maneuver," Castro noted.

The U.S. government holds that if a plane is willingly flown to the United States by a pilot not under coercion, then that act is not a hijacking and no criminal charges are brought.

A boat carrying reinforced concrete from the Isle of Youth, and a Cuban Coast Guard vessel, were then hijacked in January and February of this year, respectively, and taken to the United States (see chronology below).

The next incident took place March 19, when six armed men hijacked a Cuban airliner that was scheduled to fly from Nueva Gerona on the Isle of Youth to Havana. The plane was running out of fuel and landed in Havana, where authorities allowed it to refuel before taking off for Key West, Florida. "The hijacking of a passenger plane in flight," Castro said, "had not occurred for years, since the immigration agreement was signed." He was referring to an accord the Cuban and U.S. governments signed in 1994 after the so-called "rafters" crisis.  
 
The 1994 ‘rafters’ crisis
On August 5 of that year, a riot broke out, initiated by groups of people who had gathered on the Malecón, Havana’s waterfront, hoping that a boat would be hijacked, which they could use to get to the United States. Tensions had been building that summer, during the most difficult year of what the Cubans call the "Special Period." It was marked by severe scarcities of food, fuel, and other basic necessities in Cuba due to the collapse of trade agreements with the former Soviet Union. The hardships were exacerbated by Washington’s economic war.

There had been a series of boat hijackings by Cubans seeking to reach the shores of Florida, and who saw little hope of being granted visas by Washington. Hijackers had killed a police officer and a navy lieutenant in their attempts to take over vessels. The White House admitted those responsible for these crimes, while denying virtually anyone a legal route into the United States.

Thwarted in their August 5 hijacking attempt, a crowd of a few hundred people swarmed along the Malecón throwing rocks and breaking hotel and store windows. They were met by thousands of Cuban workers, who turned out in a show of support for the revolution. Cuban president Fidel Castro personally came to the scene and the confrontation was peacefully defused.

Speaking at a rally later that year, Castro said, referring to the August 5 events, "What did our enemies abroad and their allies inside our country want? They aimed to provoke a bloody confrontation, to force us to use weapons. And we do have weapons, indeed millions of people in this country are armed, and they are the ones who defend the revolution. But we have weapons only to fight the enemies from abroad and to defend ourselves against anyone who tries to shoot at revolutionaries inside Cuba."

The same day, the Cuban president announced that, given Washington’s role in encouraging hijackings, Cuba would not be pushed into trying to stop those wishing to leave. It would instead allow the departure of all those seeking to get to the United States, whether they had permission from Washington or not.

During the next month, some 30,000 Cubans left by raft and boat, hoping to reach Florida. The U.S. government quickly reversed its policy of openly fomenting the illegal entries. U.S. president William Clinton dispatched a naval flotilla to intercept the rafters and jammed thousands of Cubans into miserable prison camps at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo--Cuban territory occupied by Washington against the will of the Cuban people. Virtually all were eventually admitted to the United States. Clinton also imposed sanctions against Cuba, such as suspending remittances by Cuban-Americans to their relatives on the island and halting direct charter flights to Cuba.

In September of that year, the White House was forced to agree to grant a minimum of 20,000 visas per year to Cubans applying to emigrate.

Cuban government officials have pointed out recently that Washington is not meeting its part of the agreement. It is falling short of its annual quota of 20,000 visas by substantial numbers, even though requests regularly exceed this level. Last year, for example, the U.S. Interests Section granted 18,000 visas, according to the Cuban foreign minister. In the first five months of this year, which for immigration purposes begins in October, Washington granted only 505 visas.

Castro implied that the U.S. government could be trying to provoke another exodus like the one in 1994, which could "serve as a pretext for military aggression against Cuba."

On April 17, Washington used the recent arrests and trials in Cuba to escalate its anti-Cuba campaign, announcing it may impose new sanctions against Cuba, including cutting off remittances by Cuban-Americans to their families in Cuba and suspending direct flights from the United States to the island. A New York Times article in which the measures were first reported, stated, "The [U.S.] president is expected to issue a stern warning to the Havana government that the United States will not tolerate another exodus of rafters, the officials said. Several times during Mr. Castro’s 44-year tenure, most notably in 1980 and 1994, he has relieved internal tensions by allowing mass migrations to Florida."

According to an article in the April 24 Washington Post, well-placed officials also said that "one of the most draconian proposals would be suspending a bilateral migration agreement negotiated in 1994-95 after the last mass outpouring of ‘rafters.’"  
 
U.S. lets hijackers off the hook
In a March 19 televised address, Castro pointed out that the perpetrators of the first four hijackings beginning last August walk free in the streets of Miami. While U.S. authorities charged those who hijacked the passenger aircraft that day with "piracy", they refused to return the plane. On April 10, U.S. courts released these hijackers on bail.

"Why do these people leave?" Castro asked, in his March 19 broadcast. "Because they are absolutely certain of their impunity. Why do these people leave, in addition to the certainty of their impunity? Because they are welcomed there as heroes and used as raw material for anti-Cuban propaganda. They leave because there is a law, in effect for 37 years now, called the Cuban Adjustment Act, a murderous law--as we define it--that has cost thousands of lives and created countless problems."

The Cuban president compared Washington’s course to the actions taken by Havana in relation to similar incidents over the years. "Dozens and dozens of American planes were hijacked and brought to Cuba, and not a single one was ever kept here," he said. "They stayed here long enough for refueling and were sent back immediately." By contrast, he noted, "It has now become customary for any airplane hijacked from Cuba to be seized: an incentive for potential hijackers and deranged people."

"Experience shows that when the perpetrators know they have no alternative" to being returned to the country where they committed their act of piracy, Castro also noted in his April 25 speech, "they abstain from committing such crimes. This was shown irrefutably in September 1980, when two individuals, in this case unfortunately of Cuban origin, hijacked a U.S. passenger plane and commandeered it to Cuba in spite of the timely warnings issued by us against such an action. They were immediately sent back to the United States. No U.S. plane has ever again been hijacked to Cuba in 22 years."

The Cuban president also announced that "no hijacked plane or boat will ever again be given fuel to continue its journey to the United States or any other country, and the hijackers should know that they will be subjected to summary proceedings in the appropriate courts and that they should not expect clemency from the Council of State.... This is also a very hard measure, but it is unavoidable, as we need to definitively put an end to these actions."

Castro described in detail the April 2 hijacking of a passenger ferry from the Havana harbor. Eleven people armed with a handgun and knives took over the vessel, holding 29 hostages on board. The boat sailed 30 miles off the Cuban coast where it ran out of fuel, in the middle of a gale, "in serious danger of capsizing," Castro said. A Cuban Coast Guard boat managed to attach a rope to the ferry’s bow and towed it toward the port of Mariel. "The hijackers, who did not oppose the rescue operation," Castro said, "continued to hold a highly aggressive attitude, threatening to kill the hostages if they were not given fuel when they docked. They held their knives to the throats of several women every time they demanded something. Only 40 hours into the hijacking, with the cooperation of the hostages themselves who began jumping into the water, all were rescued unharmed. It was not necessary to board the vessel, which would have been done as a last resort."  
 
Executions of three ferry hijackers
The 11 hijackers were arrested April 3. They were tried five days later and convicted on charges of having committed "grave acts of terrorism" under Cuba’s Law Against Terrorism, passed in December 2001. Three of them were given the death penalty and, after the Supreme Court and Council of State upheld the sentences, were executed April 11. Four hijackers were given life in prison, and the rest were sentenced to one- to five-year terms.

"The vile propaganda of imperialism and its allies has insisted that those who were executed were so-called ‘dissidents’," deliberately lumping together their cases with the arrests and trials of the 75 convicted of aiding Washington’s economic war on Cuba, Castro said.

"Not one of them was even sentenced to life imprisonment," the Cuban president said, referring to the 75, "which is what the Miami courts did to the five Cuban heroes imprisoned by the empire for fighting against the terrorist acts with which the United States has inundated our country."

Castro was referring to five Cuban revolutionaries convicted in a federal court in Miami in 2001 on various charges, including failing to register as an agent of a foreign power, conspiracy to commit espionage for Havana and, in one case, conspiracy to commit murder. These five Cuban patriots were given sentences ranging from 15 years to a double-life term in prison. From February 28, they were thrown into solitary confinement for a month after an order by the U.S. attorney general, on the grounds that, with U.S. military action against Iraq pending, they were potential threats to "national security" because of their contact with visitors and many correspondents. The five were let out of the "hole" April 2, as Washington prepared to ratchet up its anti-Cuba campaign over the arrests of the 75.

One of the three hijackers sentenced to death had been previously indicted 15 times on criminal offenses and served jail time on several occasions, Castro said. The other two had also been convicted several times for petty crimes, including one assault on a construction worker with a knife.

"We were not happy to apply the death penalty," the Cuban president said. "We looked at it as a matter of life or death.... If revolutionaries do not defend themselves, their cause is defeated, and they pay with their lives. In this case, the lives of millions of people in this country" would be at stake. Cuba has used capital punishment sparingly, Castro noted. The last time such a sentence was handed down for a similar act was during the 1997 bombings of tourist hotels in Havana. Washington recruited several agents from Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere and paid each of them $5,000 to enter Cuba and plant the bombs, Castro said. The perpetrators were sentenced to death but have not been executed, he stated.

Up to May 2000 "the death penalty was in use for common crimes" of a particularly brutal or abhorrent kind, Castro continued. Since then Cuban authorities have implemented a "sort of moratorium" on capital punishment.

"We are moving toward a future in our country when we might be able to abolish the death penalty, not simply on philosophical grounds, but out of profound feelings of justice and humanity," Castro stated.

The execution of the three ferry hijackers was met with a "greater lack of understanding internationally" than the convictions of the 75, the Cuban president said.  
 
Debate on the Cuban measures
As Washington used these actions by the Cuban government to justify an escalation of its propaganda war against the Cuban Revolution, many liberal critics of U.S. foreign policy have joined the big-business chorus denouncing Havana.

On April 23, Brian Alexander, the executive director, and the board of directors of the Cuba Policy Foundation--a group that included former U.S. diplomats and others advocating expanded trade and contacts with Cuba--resigned in protest of what a statement by the foundation called "the regime’s sudden, wholesale repression of human rights."

A number of academic and political figures who had earlier spoken out against Washington’s economic war on Cuba, have also now joined the imperialist-orchestrated chorus. Two dozen such individuals signed a Campaign for Peace and Democracy statement April 25 titled, "Antiwar, Social Justice, and Human Rights Advocates Oppose Repression in Cuba."

Signers include the self-described anarchist Noam Chomsky, well-known social democrat Barbara Ehrenreich, historian Howard Zinn, and prominent African-American academic Cornel West. "We, the undersigned, strongly protest the current wave of repression in Cuba," the statement said. "We condemn the arrests of scores of opponents of the Cuban government for their nonviolent political activities.... We condemn as well the trial and execution of three alleged hijackers in a week’s time, both for the lack of due process and because we oppose capital punishment on principle." This group had earlier produced another document, titled, "We Oppose Both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. War on Iraq: A call for a new, democratic U.S. foreign policy."

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, author of Open Veins of Latin America, joined the condemnations of Havana as well. "The prison sentences and executions in Cuba," he said in a recent statement, "are very bad news, very sad news, news that hurt those of us who believe in the admirable courage of this very small country...but we also believe that freedom and justice march together or not at all." Colombian author Gabriel García Marquez criticized the Cuban measures as well, in a statement published in the daily El Tiempo de Bogotá April 29. The writer said he opposes the death penalty "in any place, regardless of the motives or circumstances."

In his April 25 speech, Castro said that "personalities whom our people hold in high esteem jumped in and gave their opinions and judgments without full knowledge of the facts and realities that should have been taken into account. We had also calculated and foreseen these risks. We do not expect them to share our point of view."

Debate on these questions is also taking place among revolutionists in Cuba, Castro acknowledged. "There are also many honest revolutionaries in our country who are opposed to the death penalty," he said. But they are not joining the chorus of condemnations of Cuba, he said, aiming their fire instead at Washington.

Castro also pointed to the response contained in an open letter titled "Message from Havana to friends who are far away," signed by a substantial list of well-known writers and artists in Cuba, including Silvio Rodríguez, Miguel Barnet, and Roberto Fernández Retamar. They take issue with "friends who may have been led astray" by joining the condemnations of the recent trials and sentences. To defend itself against attacks by the U.S. government, they state, "Cuba has been forced to adopt forceful measures that it naturally did not want to adopt."

Discussion among revolutionaries in Cuba should not make Washington think that the Caribbean nation may be more vulnerable to further provocations or military aggression, Castro stated. The U.S. rulers should not forget the warning by Antonio Maceo, a leader of Cuba’s struggle against Spanish colonialism, that "whoever tries to take over Cuba will gather up the dust of its blood-soaked soil, if they don’t perish in the struggle."
 

Aug. 6, 2002: Boat hijacked. Cuba requests return of five hijackers, who Washington then releases from custody.

November 11: Crop duster plane hijacked. Cuba requests return of hijackers and plane. Washington releases the hijackers, does not press charges, and takes possession of plane and auctioned it off.

Jan. 29, 2003: Cement boat hijacked. Cuba requests return of four hijackers, who U.S. government releases without responding to the Cuban request.

February 6: Patrol boat hijacked. Washington does not respond to Cuban request for return of four hijackers. It is not known whether charges have been pressed.

March 19: DC-3 passenger plane hijacked in mid-air with 31 people on board. Cuba requests return of six armed hijackers and plane. U.S. officials say hijackers formally charged with air piracy, but they are released on bail. Plane seized by court ruling on lawsuit.

March 31: AN-24 plane with 46 passengers, including 6 children, hijacked in mid-air by man who, after plane lands in Havana low on fuel, threatens to blow up plane with grenade if it is not refueled and flown to United States. U.S. officials agree to prosecute hijackers, and James Cason, chief of U.S. Interests Section, goes to airport briefly to try to dissuade hijacker. Cuban officials negotiate release of 22 hostages in exchange for fuel.

April 2: Ferry with 29 passengers, including women and children, hijacked by 11 people. Out of fuel in midst of gale, armed hijackers demand new boat and threaten to throw hostages overboard. Cuban Border Patrol rescues the boat and all hostages.

April 10: At Isle of Youth airport, eight individuals attempt to hijack passenger plane and take hostages, using AKM rifle and knives. Cuban authorities foil the hijacking.
 
 
Related articles:
Repeal Cuban Adjustment Act!  
 
 
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