http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006- ... 211936.htm

Cuba accuses U.S. of encouraging immigrant smuggling

www.chinaview.cn 2006-02-22 13:00:20


HAVANA, Feb. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Cuba's leading newspaper Tuesday accused Washington of encouraging the smuggling of Cubans to the United States in small boats, describing the trade as a "poisonous trafficking."

In an article entitled "the humiliating dirt of failure", the Granma newspaper reported a recent failed human smuggling by 14 Cubans who used a boat to pick up a group of women and children at Guajaibon beach in the region of Havana.

The boat sank somewhere between Cuba and Florida, the United States, and the authorities found a woman body ashore and arresteda man and a woman involved in the smuggling, it said.

Recently, the number of illegal boats coming from Florida to ferry Cubans to the United States has risen, the paper said. It accused the U.S. government of becoming ever more tolerant of such activities, noting that the Cuban Adjustment Law should be responsible for the death of thousands of Cubans.

Under the so-called U.S. "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, Cubans who are interdicted at sea are routinely taken back to Cuba, while those who manage to set foot on land are allowed to stay.

The U.S. Coast Guard picked up 2,866 Cubans at sea in 2005, nearly twice as many as last year and the highest number since 1994. More than 200 migrants died while trying to reach the United States by sea in the past five years. Enditem