Parallel Forum, Geneva

 

By María Elena Morejón
Esteemed listeners

 

Never in my life have I written as difficult a text as this, nor never would I have imagined that I would have to confront such a cruel situation. For this reason, I must warn you that there is a good possibility that I might not finish reading this paper with the strength that I should. Worse still, perhaps I will leave without having said all that asphyxiates my heart today. I do not know if you understand me, but I am halfway to hell and in search of a solution that I think, none of you can offer to me.

 

Within the next few months it’ll be 2 years since Fidel Castro’s regime keep my small son of 6 years in Cuba. Israel Peru Morejón is detained in Cuba because the immigration authorities consider that he is (and I quote) "the only way that the revolution has to defend itself from his parents in case they become disobedient". Therefore, my son has become a political hostage because of a "contra revolutionary crime" that nobody had committed.

 

If you think about it (and I am not going to delineate for you all of the human rights violations committed against my son), Cuba denies my loving son the possibility of being taken care of by his mother. It denies him the right to grow and to develop in a country where health, education and freedom would make him an able and independent adult. And it denies him, immediately, that which is hidden from all the children of Cuba that do not have parents who already know that their children can grow in freedom.

 

During these 20 months the Cuban regime has indirectly tried to make me responsible for my own decisions. But to decide to leave Cuba, to wish to educate my son, and to choose the country and the method to do it, are rights that I already know no one can question. Therefore, the kidnapping (by state decree), that my son suffers is, in addition, an extreme example of the injustice against which there is no possibility of appealing. Then, you reach the point where the regime has you trapped, and it is inevitable to shout out.

 

From 1997*, the Cuban security has warned that those that are not revolutionary can lose the right to decide on the future of their own children and since then, Castro has done nothing but prevent the Cuban children from joining their parents in exile. According to Cuban law, all influences opposing Communism legally invalidates parents rights to educate their children and according to that same imposition, I today should be thankful for being able to wait 5 years before my son is "possibly" (then there is no guarantee either) authorized to live with me.

 

Excuse me, but the important parts of childhood that usually happen between a mother and a son cannot wait! Nobody has the right to measure the bonds of love with a clock. Nobody has the right to destroy my family in such a way. Nobody has the right to force my son to go hungry, nor that my son is given medical care in a fly-infested hospital. Nobody has the right that tomorrow the boy sees himself forced to rob to survive, or worse yet, that someday he risks his life at sea trying to escape such abuse and arbitrariness.

 

Cuba is the only country in the world where the citizens are punished before breaking the law. Cuba is the only state in which the preventive prison is applied to children before their parents tend to dissent. Cuba is the only social experiment of the world in which children are deprived of their most elementary rights. That is, the only arena where slaves of the dogma have no right to exist, because there, the human beings live at the mercy and whim of their government employees.

 

Dear listeners, by reasons that I still cannot explain, - simply because it is not possible to explain the lack of reason -, the government of Cuba practices against my son psychological torture, the kidnapping and the terrorism of state by not allowing him his family life. But it’s not only me whom they punish, nor is it Israel, an exceptional boy just because he is mine. The 3 children of Jose Cohen, the boy of Juan Lopez, the one of Israel Rivera and Zenith Alonso, and my small one are, among many other Cuban children, examples that Cuba violates human rights "just in case".

 

Hannover, March 17, 2003