Cuban doctors still remain ignored by the Dutch authorities

It has been almost a year since the Cowley family -Roberto Cowley and his wife Marilin Garcia- stayed in The Nederlands as asylum seekers. They were running away from one of the so-called "missions", of Cuban physicians, which are working for the government of Fidel Castro in Southafrica. After mocking the vigilance of the political officials which are supposed to follow every step of the professionals in service to prevent any kind of political disorder or "desertion", they could get on a plain and began their life as persons who depend on the mercy of other governments that respect the right of the individual to live in freedom. But since their arrival to Holland things haven't been easy for them. The Ministry of Justice has denied them the right of Refugees and gives them no hope of recognition.

The reason why this asylum case has been denied is that the Ministry of Justice doesn't think that Roberto Cowley or his wife Marilin Garcia, also a physician, experienced any type of persecution in Cuba before they arrived to Southafrica or during their stay in this country. This can be, apparently, a good excuse to deny their request of asylum, but at the same time shows three things: the partial acknowledgement by the authorities of Holland of the human and political crisis taking place in Cuba now; the rigid terms on which asylum cases are analyzed and the lack of substantial information about all that a professional from the health sector, mainly physicians, have to go through in Cuba.

To start, I can say that the Cuban regime feels, as it cost no money to study and finish the university, that they own every professional in the country; but even though, between their 'possessions', physicians figure as one of the most valorized. None of them can show any type of contradiction against the official policy, if they are interested on keeping their job and license to practice. They must endure the worst work conditions, and are always exploited as workers, having to do often non remunerated extra hours, sometimes they even have to work twenty four hours a day. Their access to information is limited, they can't connect to Internet and they can't think in any type of serious improvement of their knowledge, two things of remarkable importance for a more effective practice. No doctor leave the country without a permission from the Minister of Health, which is mostly denied and if they win one of the lotteries to emigrate to United States legally, the Permission of Departure from the Cuban authorities is difficulted in every possible way. The life of a physician is not generally the life of a political fighter; they have to show submission to the government or they will immediately lose everything. They live constantly harassed, and any protest or complain about their situation that rises among them strikes immediately with the machinery of threats and blackmails.

During the last eight years Fidel Castro's government has intensified the use of physicians for international political propaganda. In spite of the terrible internal situation of the health system, the personal talent of many excellent professionals is used to create a false impression of the capability of socialism to "provide health", for all the Cubans and even to the whole world. This maneuvers, have increased the political tensions in the sector by the fact that as the government give to some the possibility of leaving the country to earn dollars for themselves, even when the State keeps around the sixty percent of their salaries, they ask in return extreme political obedience. If any of them dares to violate this pact, this person becomes a direct enemy to the regime. When someone follows the dictate of the consciousness and refuses to continue to play the roll of the puppet is inevitable to receive the title of "traitor" by the Cuban authorities. These professionals have much to tell about the dark face of a regime that pretends to deceive every free nation selling an image of a democratic stability; the face that shows a country with the most severe restrictions of human freedom and the most repressive reality that the modern history of our hemisphere has seen.

Perhaps countries like Holland don't realize what is happening. In Cuba every citizen is attached to a system of repression that goes into your life everyday until the moment you can not breath and simply decide to protest -and therefore suffer instantaneous repression- or you have to escape to avoid death and torture. Every single day for a Cuban professional is a constant argument with the personal convictions and the rules you have to obey without objection. Then, when a person jumps over this, risking everything, looking for a life without such dangers finds that the application of the international treaties that some governments do is even more extreme than the real dangers in a country oppressed by a totalitarian regime. In Cuba, when there is an order of arrest against you it is easier to step on the darkness of an inhuman jail than in the door of an airport. People who vote for life and not for the holocaust of personal integrity or an entire family, or that simply want to fight with the right to be save, mainly look for a way to escape before the situation turns very serious inside this island-jail where you can stay buried forever.

I really want to think that the government of Holland ignores these facts, but I have to face the reality that they surely know them all. Then why they remain in this position of not recognizing what is screaming out to the whole world. Do we have to think that is a new strategy not to alterate the up-growing economical relations between the dictatorship and the democratic government? Most of the European nations are showing a very two-sided policy when it comes to the Cuban reality, probably because they consider that after the falling down of the eastern communism Cuba's regime is sinking by itself, and becoming more harmless. That is a huge mistake. The government of Cuba is turning everyday stronger mainly by all the money that the European nations and Canada are investing in Cuba, aware of the profit that the soft policy of the Cuban State in this sense provides them. But the most dishonest fact of all is that -behind all the apparent good intentions of helping in the economical development of the country- they are all aware that the regime offers them, maybe for the first time in recent history, the possibility of a market where the potent United State’s companies are completely out. It seems that wining a few years of advantage to the ‘Empire’ excites the thirstiness of their pockets. Then is natural that the distinguished sirs won’t have a single consciousness problem when they go to sleep in one of Miramar’s mansions (surely one of those that the ‘revolutionaries’ once stole and today exploit) laying beside a beautiful young –almost a teenager- Cuban girl that is only interested in the thickness of his pockets; after giving a dollar tip to a black kid who tried to clean the windscreen of his Peugeot in the centric corner of 41st and 42nd. To see how far were sent, in the middle of this huge party, our worth and rights as human beings and as members of a nation is what make every Cuban sick. But the foreign investors and diplomats consider this as an exclusive problem between the Cuban government and the people.

I do think that the situation of this family of Cubans, trapped in a process that for long and closed reaches almost the inhuman, has much to do with all this facts. It's obvious a weak political will of recognizing the right of persons that are real political victims. By general rule, every Cuban doctor that arrives to a foreign country receives asylum. Holland has remained stable in its hard policy against Cubans. During last November the entrance to the country was denied to another physician and his family (wife and two children), facing immediate danger of deportation. This was avoided thanks to a visa given to them by a third country. Also two other Cubans were deported the same December after two weeks of reclusion in the frontier. We cannot think that it is a fashion for doctors to abandon the places where they were sent, breaking contracts and links with the Cuban government. We must all realize that this is the result of a political crisis that has been hidden inside the walls of the Island for decades and that only now finds the chance to be exposed to the world.

All these professionals are victims of the most intense pressures; they should have the right to be recognized as political refugees. If the democratic nations remain handling cases like this one with the same superficiality and coldness, the world would be giving Fidel Castro another reason to strengthen his methods of strict control of the lives of the Cubans and to augment his capability of manipulating internal and international opinion as he usually does. There may be no orders of arrest against them, or they can't show no shoots in the legs, or have no support from dissident organizations, but they still have a past of political suffering, a life full of direct threats and fears, and the perspective of the worst if they fall in the hands of the Cuban authorities. It is enough suffering and frustration for them. We urge for the truth to be accepted and for their rights to be recognize without any legal extremism.

Asley L. Mármol

Personal data:

Asley L. Marmol (1977, Havana.) Poet, narrator and critic of literature. Studied Spanish Language and Literature in the Pedagogical University Enrique Jose Varona, in Havana, until the beginning of the fifth and last year when he had to leave the country. In Cuba was a recognized member of the last generation of Cuban authors. Worked as vicedirector of the independent literary magazine "Jacara". Published in 1996 the book of poems "El Cuerpo Vivo" (The living body). His work appeared also in national publications. He lives in Holland at present. He is a credited collaborator of the cultural magazine "Amsterdam Sur". Last 29 of March he dictated a lecture in the Faculty of Latin-American Language and Culture of the University of Leiden. He has also been invited to speak by the cultural institution “La Tertulia” in Amsterdam, by the “Círculo Cervantes de Maastricht” and by the “Asociación Hispánica de la Haya”.  Part of his work it's been translated and published in The Nederlands at present.

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