Castro regime agents sink a vessel heading to the United States, killing Cuban refugees.

Nathali Acosta Lemus, Aimara Meizoso León, Omar Reyes Valdés , Elisabeth Meizoso, and Rachel Ramaya Ullo

A Cuban coast guard ship sank a boat just north of Bahía Honda, in the province of Artemisa heading to the United States on October 28, 2022, and killed at least five Cuban refugees, and others are missing. This is the news that the Castro regime seeks to obfuscate. Four women (Aimara Meizoso León, Nathali Acosta Lemus, Rachel Ramaya Ulloa, Indira Serrano Cala),  two men (León Omar Reyes Valdés, Yerandy García Meizoso), and a two year old girl (Elisabeth Meizoso) were killed. Journalist Mario Penton shared the above images of the victims over his social media. 

Indira Serrano Cala (age 18)

 

The boat sank this Friday "when it collided with a surface unit of Border Guard Troops during its identification," according to a note from the Ministry of the Interior reported 14ymedio.

That the United States Embassy in Havana and a news bureau on the island give the dictatorship the benefit of the doubt is an outrage. 

Yerandy García Meizoso

Consider the following partial history of how Cuban government agents deal with Cuban refugees fleeing the island.

 

Nine years before the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp was established and there were no detainees from the war on terror being held on the base atrocities were being committed, and the world paid little notice.

 * On June 19, 1993 at 2 p.m., U.S. guards, startled by the sounds of detonations, saw Cuban troops aboard patrol boats dropping grenades in the paths of several swimmers headed for the U.S. base.

* On June 20, 1993 at 1:30 p.m., Cuban troops repeated the action, then strafed the water with machine-gun fire.

U.S. soldiers patrolling the perimeter of the Guantanamo Naval Base were horrified by what they observed. This led to a formal diplomatic note to the Cuban government by the Clinton Administration. This in turn led to a front page story in The Miami Herald on July 7, 1993 which described what had been witnessed:

Cuban marine patrols, determined to stop refugees from reaching the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, have repeatedly tossed grenades and shot at fleeing swimmers and recovered some bodies with gaff hooks, U.S. officials charged Tuesday. At least three Cubans have been killed in the past month as Cuban patrol boats attacked swimmers within sight of U.S. Navy personnel at Guantanamo.

On July 13, 1994, a group of 72 Cubans, including children and women, tried to escape from the Island of Cuba aboard an old tugboat. State Security Forces, and four Ministry of Transportation boats of the Havana regime intercepted the boat 7 miles off the coast of Cuba, with water jets from pressure hoses pulled people off the deck, tore children from the arms of their mothers and sank the tugboat. 37 Cubans were murdered, 11 of them children.  This crime was documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 1995, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1996, Amnesty International in 1997, and referenced by Human Rights Watch in their 1999 report.

 

Why is none of this mentioned on background, or used to inform American diplomats on the likelihood that what occurred today was an "accident" or a premeditated extrajudicial killing?

 

Saddened that reading news in the United States about Cuba requires the same critical thinking skills applied to interpreting the official media of the Castro regime. Megan Janetsky, the new Associated Press Correspondent's first piece, repeated in her article's title "Crisis-stricken Cuba caught between ally Russia, nearby U.S." a talking point by the Cuba lobby that makes no sense when looking at the historical record, and present reality. The Castro regime did not have a problem criticizing Moscow during the Gorbachev years. This included censoring Soviet publications, and executing officers viewed as contaminated by Glasnost and Perestroika. Relations did not return to "normal" until the Vladimir Putin took power in 2000. 

The Castro regime's hatred of the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis manifested itself in trying to manipulate the Russians into launching a first strike on the United States. It was the Russians that sought an accommodation with the Americans.

Now Ms. Janetsky reports the regime talking points with the title "Cuba says at least 5 dead after boat heading to US crashes", but does not provide any of the above background in the story or what the families of the current victims are saying.

 

Worse yet, was the statement from the U.S. Embassy in Havana taking at face value regime claims that it was an "accident" considering the Cuban government's history of brutal cruelty visited on fleeing refugees. 

 

Listen to the survivors of the "13 de marzo" tugboat massacre, and family members of those who didn't make it in 1994, and the need for an international investigation to learn what actually happened becomes clear.