-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a prelude to war! Miami protest over boat boy escalates, 80 arrested Updated 4:38 PM ET January 6, 2000 By Jim Loney MIAMI, (Reuters) - Cuban exiles jammed downtown roads, disrupted traffic and blockaded Miami's port Thursday in angry but peaceful protests against a U.S. government decision to send a 6-year-old shipwreck survivor back to communist Cuba. Helmeted riot police with truncheons confronted dozens of protesters who marched to Miami's busy seaport and sat down on the pavement at entrance and exit roads, snarling traffic. About 80 people were arrested, police officials said. Miami foes of Cuban President Fidel Castro took to the streets a day after a ruling by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that Elian Gonzalez, who was found in the Atlantic clinging to an inner tube in late November and brought to Miami, should be returned to his father in Cuba. "There are 11 million people in Cuba in a big jail. If Elian is sent back, he will be going to a big jail," said protester Lourdes Chao-Navarrete, moments before she was handcuffed and led to a waiting police van. The protests started when several truckers drove at 10 mph along the Dolphin Expressway, a major road, during the morning rush hours, backing up traffic for miles. Florida Highway Patrol troopers handed out $85 tickets to the drivers. The demonstrations escalated at noon when dozens of exiles gathered outside a downtown federal building waving red, white and blue Cuban flags. They swarmed police barricades and streamed around cars on a boulevard, with small groups breaking off to sit and stand in intersections to block traffic in all directions. "That kid should not be sent back to hell," said Maria Elena Cervera, a 46-year-old Cuban-born protester. "I went through that hell when I was a kid ... Are we going to send a child back to prison just to be with his father?" Some stranded motorists supported them but others objected. "I think they should stop this. They should be going to court, not here," said motorist Armando Garcia, 33, who came to the United States from Cuba at age 10. Similar protests over the treatment of refugees last summer infuriated Miamians. "Unfortunately we have had to resort to these tactics because the president is unwilling to understand how traumatic it would be for Elian to be sent back to Cuba," protest organizer Ramon Saul Sanchez told Reuters. The INS decision issued on Wednesday marked the latest stage in a politically charged battle between the 6-year-old boy's father in Cuba, who wants him back, and relatives in Miami who say Elian should grow up in the United States. Elian was plucked from the Atlantic Ocean on Nov 25. He clung to an inner tube for two days after a smugglers' boat bringing illegal migrants to Florida capsized. His mother was one of 11 people who died in the disaster. His father Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a tourism worker who was divorced from the mother, had appealed for Elian to be sent home to him. Castro's government said the boy was kidnapped and staged massive rallies in Cuba urging his return. In Miami on Thursday, exiles on foot, riding bicycles and at least one driving a hot dog cart roamed the streets waving signs reading "Justice for Elian" and "Elian's return; Clinton's infamy." A van festooned with Cuban flags rolled along Biscayne Boulevard, a speaker blaring: "His mother died for his freedom." At the port entrance, protesters argued with police and ignored warnings to move, asking to be arrested. They were pulled to their feet, handcuffed and marched into police vans. "Is this crazy? Only in Miami," a passerby said. The boy's Miami relatives have vowed to go to court to stop any attempt to send him back, saying Elian wants political asylum in the United States. But the INS ruled the father has the legal right to speak for him. The Miami relatives appealed to Attorney General Janet Reno, a Miamian, to overturn the decision. But she disappointed them Thursday, saying she backed INS Commissioner Doris Meissner. "I fully agree with her determination that the father has the legal right and the legal authority to speak for his child in immigration matters," Reno said in Washington. Legal experts said that even if the Miami relatives were deemed to have legal standing to sue on Elian's behalf in a U.S. court, a judge was unlikely to rule in their favor. "If the father wishes to have the child returned to him and have his application for political asylum withdrawn, that would trump the claim of the (Miami) family," said Bernard Perlmutter, a legal expert at the University of Miami. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who said Elian's fate should be decided in the courts, said the protests should be held in a way that would not jeopardize public safety. INS officials said Elian should be returned to Cuba by Jan. 14, but as of Thursday they had not decidedly exactly how and when the boy should be sent back. **COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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