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Reuters. 29 December 2001. Cubans Oppose Plan for Prisoners at
Guantanamo.
HAVANA -- Senior Cuban officials voiced their opposition on Saturday to
Washington's plans for housing Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in a
controversial U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay on the communist-run
Caribbean island.
"I think it would be yet another mistake by the Americans to use that
usurped territory," Higher Education Minister Fernando Vecino Alegret
said of the proposal to turn the facility on Cuba's southeast tip into a
detention center.
"I think there will be repudiation of that around the world," Vecino
told reporters outside a special session of Cuba's National Assembly
parliament.
Cuban Attorney General Juan Escalona also scoffed at the plan announced
on Thursday by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to bring detainees from
the conflict in Afghanistan half-way around the world to the century-old
Guantanamo base.
[N.B.] "It's another provocation from the Americans. I hope 15 or 20
(prisoners) get out and kill them," Escalona said, with ironic laughter,
on his way into the parliament meeting.
While condemning the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Havana has
also opposed the bombardment of Afghanistan, calling it a barbaric
massacre of civilians to advance imperial goals.
Cuban President Fidel Castro and his ruling Communist Party have long
opposed their decades-old political foe's military presence at the 45
square mile base in Guantanamo Bay, calling the installation a "dagger
pointed at Cuba's heart."
With Castro still not commenting in public on the U.S. plan, and state
media not mentioning the news, the comments by Vecino and Escalona were
the first reaction by Cuban officials.
Their views were echoed by some ordinary Cubans.
"We don't tell the Americans what to do in their territory, so they
shouldn't come here and dictate on our land," 26-year-old Julio Mier
said on a Havana street.
"This is a lack of respect for Cuba," added taxi-driver Herminio
Herrera.
At Saturday's special session of the Cuban parliament, five Cuban agents
jailed in Florida on spy charges were awarded the distinction of "Heroes
of the Republic" and lauded as patriots unfairly punished for trying to
block anti-Communist "terrorism."
"They have carried out with exemplary dedication, dignity and firmness
the sacred mission of defending the fatherland and protecting it from
terrorism," said a citation read by National Assembly President Ricardo
Alarcon in Castro's presence.
As part of a mass campaign to demand their release, 40,000 Cubans
attended a state-organized rally earlier on Saturday in western Pinar
del Rio province.
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