Cuban boxers' repatriation criticized
Activists and Brazilian legislators are asking the government to explain
the quick repatriation of two Cuban boxers who defected during the Pan
Am games.
Posted on Thu, Aug. 09, 2007
BY JACK CHANG
McClatchy News Service
RIO DE JANEIRO --
Brazilian legislators and an international human-rights group are
criticizing the weekend repatriation of two Cuban boxers who abandoned
the Pan American Games, saying that police spirited the pair out of
Brazil under suspicious circumstances.
Two-time Olympic bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux, 26, and
welterweight world champion Erislandy Lara, 24, were taken into police
custody Thursday on a resort beach near Rio after disappearing two weeks
earlier.
Although the pair had signed five-year contracts with the German company
Arena Box-Promotion, they told police they wanted to go home, federal
police investigator Felicio Laterca told McClatchy before escorting the
boxers to their chartered flight Saturday night.
NOT WELCOME
Cuban leader Fidel Castro said the two would never fight again on the
Cuban team.
''The athlete who abandons his delegation is like the soldier who
abandons his comrades in the middle of combat,'' he wrote in an article
published Wednesday, adding that Cuba might not send a boxing team to
next year's Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Castro placed most of the blame for the incident on Lara, ``who, as
captain of the boxing team, still broke the rules and played directly
into the hands of the mercenaries.''
The speed with which the boxers left the country and their public
silence while under police watch have raised suspicions about what
really happened, said José Miguel Vivanco, the director of the Americas
division of Human Rights Watch.
Vivanco called for Brazil's government to conduct a ''full and fair''
investigation. Before the boxers left, they spoke only to the police and
declined comment when a McClatchy reporter approached them outside a
federal police station in the city of Niteroi.
The Brazilian Justice Ministry said the two had been informed of their
right to request political asylum in Brazil but that they had chosen not
to do so.
Brazil's government ''should have made sure the full process was fully
transparent and not just handled by the police,'' Vivanco said.
``To resolve this behind closed doors, in the middle of the night, in a
summary process where there's only one side of the story, it raises
questions.''
POSSIBLE DEAL?
Brazilian legislators said they suspected that President Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva had worked out an agreement with Castro to return the boxers.
The Brazilian Senate's international relations committee has asked the
justice and foreign ministers to publicly explain the Cubans' departure.
Two other Cubans -- handball player Rafael Capote and gymnastics coach
Lázaro Lamelas Ramírez -- also defected at the Pan Am games. An attorney
with a refugee aid group in Sao Paulo said two members of the Cuban
delegation had applied for political asylum in Brazil.
Brazilian Sen. Eduardo Suplicy, of the Workers' Party, said he had
talked by telephone Wednesday to Lara's wife in Cuba, who said the boxer
had not been harmed.
''I would like to have seen an interview [in Cuba] with Lara himself,
because that would help calm many of my worries,'' Suplicy said. ``I
want to see this matter clarified in the quickest manner possible.''
New details about the case have cast doubt on the account that the
boxers gave Brazilian police.
The boxers said they had been drugged and kidnapped July 20 by two
German citizens who represented Arena Box-Promotion, causing them to
miss their July 22 fights. They said they'd been moved around the Rio de
Janeiro region before police spotted them Thursday.
The Justice Ministry said, however, that the boxers had asked a
fisherman in Araruama to call the police shortly before they were found,
suggesting that they were giving themselves up to authorities.
The owner of the guesthouse where the boxers stayed told a McClatchy
reporter that their bags already had been packed when police arrived.
Ahmet Oner, Arena's chief executive officer, said the Cubans had
initially chosen to defect but changed their minds later out of fear for
their families' safety.
''The pressure of Fidel Castro was just too great,'' Oner said.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/197265.html
No comments:
Post a Comment