Cuban-American congressmen ask U.S. Representative to the United Nations for an investigation into the massacre in Bahía Honda

On October 28, 2022 a Cuban coast guard ship purposefully rammed and sank a boat just north of Bahía Honda, in the province of Artemisa that was heading north to the United States with Cuban refugees.

The names of the seven victims are: Aimara Meizoso León, Elizabeth Meizoso, Indira Serrano Cala, Omar Reyes Valdés, Nathali Acosta Lemus, Yerandy García Meizoso, and Israel Gómez. 

Five Cuban-American Members of Congress wrote a letter to the U.S. Representative to the United Nations for an investigation into the massacre in Bahía Honda on November 10, 2022.

 

November 10, 2022
 

The Honorable Linda Thomas-Greenfield
U.S. Representative to the United Nations
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
799 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017
 

Dear Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield,
 

We write to express our profound concern regarding the Cuban regime’s sinking of a boat near Bahía Honda which reportedly resulted in the deaths of at least seven Cubans, including one child. Accordingly, we respectfully request that you condemn these murders at the United Nations, and call for an international investigation into whether they constitute crimes against humanity. 

Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as actions such as murder, torture, persecution, “imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty,” or other “inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health” which is knowingly “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.” We believe that the sinking of a civilian boat by a Cuban regime vessel, resulting in the deaths of vulnerable, unarmed Cuban civilians was knowing, purposeful, and part of a systematic campaign of oppression against those who dare to oppose the regime – even if that “opposition” is simply attempting to escape.

Such action at the United Nations has precedent. As you know, the United Nations Human Rights Council established the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (FFMV) in September 2019 with a one-year mandate (resolution 42/25). The FFMV was extended another two years (resolution 45/20). Throughout those three years, the FFMV has produced three reports documenting the Maduro dictatorship’s egregious human rights abuses and numerous crimes, such as extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and torture. These reports have highlighted not only the abuses, but also the state’s systematic complicity in committing them.

While Venezuela voluntarily subjected itself to the jurisdiction of the ICC long before Maduro seized power, Cuba never did so. However, the UN and the ICC both have authority to investigate crimes against humanity. Shamefully, the regime in Cuba has committed egregious human rights abuses systematically and knowingly for nearly six decades with few repercussions; the perpetrators of these crimes have not been held accountable for their atrocities at the United Nations nor the International Criminal Court. The victims of firing squads, political persecution, arbitrary imprisonment, widespread expropriations, the Tugboat Massacre, Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, reprisals following repatriations or failed refugee attempts, torture, terrorism, forced disappearances, and arbitrary killings deserve to have their cases heard and documented by the international bodies charged with safeguarding human rights.

Most recently in Cuba, in the case of the boat sinking near Bahía Honda, the regime has not been forced to account for the deaths of these Cubans whose only crime was attempting to flee their island prison. Persecuting those who attempt escape has become a reprehensible pattern of the regime, following the dozens of innocent lives lost in the deliberate and vicious Tugboat “13 de Marzo” Massacre of 1994, the executions of three men who attempted to escape by seizing a ferry in 2003, and now the regime’s sinking of a boat off Bahía Honda. We believe that the knowing and systematic nature of the regime’s actions in murdering innocent Cubans is well established.

It is past time that the regime in Cuba, and those who carry out its malign directives, are held accountable for the torment that they inflict on the Cuban people. When these crimes are no longer committed with impunity, perhaps those receiving these heinous orders will decline to follow them. Accordingly, within all applicable rules and regulations, we respectfully request that you unequivocally condemn these barbaric acts at every opportunity. We further request that you call for a full, fair, and expeditious investigation into these killings with particular consideration as to whether they constitute crimes against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, or other customary international rules and norms.

Thank you for your attention to this matter of utmost importance.

Sincerely,

 

 

Mario Diaz-Balart, Member of Congress

Albio Sires, Member of Congress

Maria Elvira Salazar, Member of Congress 

Carlos A. Gimenez, Member of Congress

Nicole Malliotakis, Member of Congress

Lies, Damned Lies, and Polls

It just doesn't add up

Sergio Bendixen on the right seated with Carlos Saladrigas on the left

Once again Bendixen & Amandi International are peddling a poll in the media that purports that there is a generational divide in the Cuban exile community over the new U.S. Cuba policy announced by the Obama Administration. Bendixen has been called to account time and time again for having numbers that do not add up but always favor the anti-embargo position. The pollster has gone on record in his advocacy of remittances in Cuba showing that he has a dog in this race. 

Another outfit with a dubious record are the Cuba polls conducted by Florida International University (FIU) that have been sponsored by the Brookings Institution, the Cuba Study Group, the Christopher Reynolds Foundation and the Ford Foundation. All of these groups lobby heavily in favor of unconditionally lifting the U.S. embargo on the Castro dictatorship. In 2014 the FIU poll was paid for by The Trimpa Group and George Soros' Open Society Foundation. 

In an interview on Saturday a journalist asked my thoughts on the latest Bendixen poll trying to sell the idea that there is a generational divide and that the youth are against maintaining sanctions on Cuba. The response to the question: Stated clearly that their polls have a bias and therefore don't pay them any attention. Journalists should consider questioning pollsters and not accepting at face value what they are peddling.

Here is the reason why. Bendixen back in 2008 said Lincoln Diaz-Balart was supposedly statistically tied with Raul Martinez, 41 to 37 percent in July. On October 23, 2008 The Miami New Times wrote a lengthy article by Francisco Alvarado titled: "End of the Diaz-Balart Dynasty: The Republican brothers are headed for defeat, and Cuban-American politics will change forever." Letters to the editor followed up reaffirming the previous weeks article on the political demise of the Diaz-Balart brothers and then election day and both were re-elected. On election day: Lincoln Diaz Balart won with 57.90% to Raul Martinez's 42.10%. Martinez had campaigned about loosening the embargo not ending it. There has yet to be a Cuban American congressman or Senator that has been elected anywhere who is against maintaining the Embargo. This position transcends party allegiance and ideology. 

The bottom line a polling outfit can get whatever response they want depending on the wording of their questions, but the fact remains that on election day in precincts where the overwhelming numbers are Cuban Americans they strongly vote for pro-Embargo candidates.

One fundamental question comes to mind in all this "news" about polls supporting the president's actions on Cuba: Why did he wait until after the 2014 mid term election to act? With a Democratic Senate, President Obama could nominate the new US ambassador to Cuba, but now with a Republican Senate in 2015 that nomination can be blocked. What this says is that despite all the hype and bogus push polls when it came to the only poll that counts, the vote on Election Day they blinked.

Meanwhile the arguments of the current Obama policy continue to flow in from all quarters and are worth checking out: The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl, andThe Wall Street Journal's Mary O'Grady should be read.