Switzerland, what a shame!

Carlos Wotzkow

Early this year, the Major of Bienne, the socialist Hans Stöckli, invited Fidel Castro to the inauguration of Expo '02. At that time he made a bet with the local newspaper (Biel Bienne), in which he ascertained that dictator Castro would come to his city (a small village not bigger than San José de las Lajas in Cuba) to visit the Expo (which appeared to be the hugest economic squanderingmade in Switzerland after the purchase of the F-18 planes).

Like a shameless messenger, Major Stöckli ran from Bienne to Bern to beg the Cuban ambassador, “comrade Theresa Vicente” for news about the visit of his honored guest. But the plain and open ambassadress, neither diplomatic nor polite, hid from him all the time leaving an answering machine and a fax -which she never answered - in charge of her consulate functions.

Sad and melancholic, Hans Stöckli, watched how his Expo was ending without the arrival of his “greatest leader”, which caused him to physically chase the Cuban representative in Switzerland on several occasions. Hans Stöckli’s dilemma, about three months ago was more or less the following: “Everybody is informed – he pledged hopeless – from the Cuban ambassadress to the Swiss ambassador in Cuba, including the Federal Counselor Joseph Deiss. It is only a matter of a little help from destiny, and I will win the bet” (1)

In January, this year, when I knew of this repulsive invitation, I wrote an article entitled “Bienne: General Headquarters of Fools in Switzerland” (2), and I sent it by certified mail to Stöckli’s office. So far, just as it happened to him with the Cuban ambassadress, he has not answered me or even tried to find out a bit more about his honorable guest, the Cuban Polpot, or the modern Hitler of the Caribbean, as you may consider best.

However, the topic that inspires me to write this today is not that of a mean dictator like Castro invited by a fool Swiss to “teach a lecture on history to the Swiss youths” neither the Expo 02 which is not even worth a good criticism. The topic today is that there are two Cubans in danger, and not even Stöckli, or a good help from destiny will save them, if we do not join forces together against the human disaster that communist Cuba represents.

In December 1998, Manuel Antonio Vega González applied for a political asylum status in Geneva and was sent to Ticino. From that moment on, a long process starts in which, after all the evidence presented, the Swiss authorities are still not convinced of the alleged persecution causes. On June 11^th. 2001, Susana Martínez López, sentimentally related to the above mentioned Cuban, asked for an asylum status in the Ticino canton and even after explaining that her fiancé was in Ticino, she is sent to Bern. So the Federal Bureau for the Refugees in Switzerland joined efforts with Castro in his attempts to segregate and destroy Cuban family bonds, forcing them apart and needing to spend a lot of money to see each other.

But the worst decision was yet to come. On October 21^st. of the current year, the Swiss Federal Bureau for the Refugees informed Manuel Vega that his appeal was not accepted and that his deportation to Cuba was “practicable”. That means: imminent, and with date December 12^th. 2002.

I don’t have to explain any Cuban what these fellow countryman and woman felt when they knew that the Swiss authorities had failed to back them or understand them. Their solution to this dilemma was clear: only dead they will return to Cuba. And in a matter of hours they sell all their belongings cheap and with the amount of the sale they bought two false Spanish passports and two plane tickets to escape that fate, butunfortunately were arrested when boarding the plane in Zürich.

For the Swiss authorities and for majors as Stöckli, it is only a matter of two foreign citizens thatbroke the law. For any Cuban it is a matter of life or death. It is the case of two honest people that confronted themselves ethically and for the first time,due tothe Swiss policy of asylum, areforcedto break the law to save their lives. That is why I am ashamed of Stöckli, and I am ashamed of Switzerland, a country that until now was farfrom the mediocrity of Europe but shamefully is little by littlefalling into it.

For those, Cubans or not, that might feel touched by the efforts and fateof these two fellow citizens of mine, there is just a hope to save them. This hope is to write. Write letters to the Federal Bureau for the Refugees in Switzerland and ask for them a humanitarian permit so they could stay in Switzerland until the end of Castro and then they can be sent back, but only then and not to the claws of the murderer of Fidel Castro. I myself have already started to write, because I still do believe much more in Swiss institutions that in those of my country now. You can help. Please write to:

Office Féderal de Réfugies (Information about the two Cubans

Quellenweg 6 are given at the end of the article)(3)

CH-3003 Bern-Wabern

Switzerland

Carlos Wotzkow

Bienne, December 2^nd.2002

gundlachi@hotmail.com

Fax: (Long Distance Code) + 41 32 342 2601

NOTES:

(1). The information stated in paragraphs 1 to 3 was taken from an article of the Biel Bienne newspaper in the section “Actuel”, September 12^th. 2002, scorning Stöckli.

(2) The article “Bienne: General Headquarters of Fools in Switzerland” was published in La Nueva Cuba on January 24^th, 2002. This version was the one I sent to Stöckli’s office.

(3) Manuel Antonio Vega González: Swiss Temp. Alien ID No.: N 360 234 Mas/Mct. Ref No.: 12 809 147

Susana María Martínez López: Swiss Temp. Alien ID No.: N 409 678 Ebl Ref No.: 13 043 491

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