Cuba denies plans to open borders
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from June 1999.
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Such versions, carried by foreign media hostile to the Havana government such as the U.S.-funded Radio Marti, were "totally unfounded and untrue," said an Interior Ministry statement published in the ruling Communist Party's daily Granma. "There is not the slightest possibility that Cuba's maritime borders will be opened to the United States," it added.
Rumours had been circulating in Havana and among the large Cuban exile community across the water in Florida that President Fidel Castro's government was mulling such a measure as a safety-valve to relieve social tensions on the island. There were even unofficial reports of gatherings at northern ports rumoured to be opening up for Cuban migrants.
The two previous times Cuba took such action provoked the so-called 1994 "rafters' crisis" when an estimated 30,000 Cubans took to sea, and the 1980 "Mariel boatlift" when about 125,000 people left for the United States from the port of Mariel.
Rumours of a similar move this year, however, "form part of the sustained and unscrupulous enemy propaganda campaigns, intended to sow confusion, stimulate the illegal exodus, and pressure the nation's political and social situation, in the midst of some difficulties which we are overcoming and the people's efforts to go forward despite the iron, imperialist blockade," the Interior Ministry statement said.
It was referring to the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba.
Cuba was particularly incensed at suspicions the rumours may have been started by officials in order to detect potential defectors and illegal migrants, the ministry said. The statement reiterated Cuba's commitment to the May 1995 immigration accords with the United States, which were intended to stem the uncontrolled flow of departures from the island.
