Author: Various Authors
Elián Update 4-18-00
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Cuba Sets Up School for Elian
.c The Associated Press
HAVANA (AP) - Cuban officials say they have prepared a boarding school in Havana to help 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez readapt to the island once he is returned from the United States.
Saying the boy has been psychologically damaged during his stay in Miami, psychologist Patricia Ares told Cuban state television late Monday that a team of teachers and psychologists would help him recover.
That work would be done by psychologists at a special boarding school in the Miramar district of Havana, which would include stays by his teachers and fellow students from Cardenas, 60 miles east of Havana.
The new school bears the same name as Elian's school in Cardenas and is equipped with "all the conditions so that the relatives of the little one, a specialized medical team and 12 fellow students can stay there for the necessary time," the government's Prensa Latina news agency reported.
It quoted teachers as saying the boy would probably be there for at least three months.
Cuban officials say Elian has been psychologically abused by his great-uncle's family in Miami, which has had custody of the boy since he was rescued after a shipwreck in late November. Elian's mother died in the shipwreck, and his father has gone to the United States to try and reclaim his son.
They have been especially critical of heavy media attention on the child and the family's release of a videotape showing Elian saying he does not want to return to Cuba.
``The more time that passes, the more dangerous it is,'' said Aurora Garcia, a psychology professor from the University of Havana.
AP-NY-04-18-00 1307EDT
Commentary:
Wow! Has Castro really pulled out all of the stops! Now his experts, helped by the Reno hired experts in the U.S. are claiming that little Elián, after five months of being left to relatives in Miami, is really a victim of abusive relatives and he will need a special school set up just for him. Nothing too good for a Cuban boy eh?
At least one abused so badly after being shanghied out of Cuba by a defecting woman, who left her ex husband with a new wife, one son, and another coming, to take Elián from Paradise to Hell!
Come on America. Wake up! The family in Miami may be surrounded by thousands who lived with the hell of Castro and hate him, but this family gave Elián love and care for four months before the father ever was told to consider going to not Miami, but Washington to get his son. He was to be handed over on a ‘silver platter’ courtesy of the National Council of Churches, but that failed to work out.
Then the INS decided to change the temporary custody to none at all since the father arrived in the D.C. Castro headquarters. Only problem, the family failed to deliver the boy and Janet Reno doesn’t want more blood on her hands. So, she blusters, threatens, and hires experts to denigrate the family that has loved this boy, even though he is not their son!
This story is starting to smell worse and worse. Every effort is being made by Castro and Reno to make it look like the family is beastly, the boy is suffering, and he needs the kind of goodies that only Castro and the father can provide! What a charade!
The memory of the mother, the likelyhood that the father knew and approved the defection, but can’t admit it are being ignored. Sure, the father loves his son. Why do you think he let the boy go? Because he hated him? It might have been convenient with a new wife and two kids to support without Elián, and maybe wife #2 didn’t care much for a step-son, for the father to let the boy and his mother go to Florida.
Reno is knocking herself out as though she has nothing else to do, trying to placate Castro and all she can achieve is to play into his hands, buying into the hype and nonesense about the poor suffering boy! That boy can do very well, if Fidel will just bring the father home and leave the boy in the U.S. But, he can’t do that without letting the finger be pointed at him as the reason for the defection, something understood a lot better by Cubans in Miami than by the rest of us who live in America and never had to think about survival in Cuba.
Sure that place is just like the heaven known in the Soviet Union. All it needs is a lifting of the embargo to have a market for what- sugar? Cuba can only sell tourism and it needs a lot of capital and time to set that up again. But, this is another part of the story. The simple truth is that this is a family custody matter that the media have turned into a bonanza with help from Castro and Janet Reno.
April 19 Updae:
Elián won this day in court!
Court Keeps Elian in U.S.
By RUSS BYNUM
.c The Associated Press
ATLANTA (April 19) - In a strongly worded ruling today, a federal appeals panel extended a court order keeping Elian Gonzalez in the United States and said the U.S. government should have taken the 6-year-old's wishes into account.
In Miami's Little Havana, a crowd of more than 300 people erupted in cheers and chants of ''God Bless America!'' after the ruling from a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
''This is the second miracle of Elian,'' said Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of Democracy Movement. ''We are taking the right way.''
The 16-page ruling bars anyone from attempting to remove Elian from the United States. But it did not specifically forbid the INS from taking custody and it did not address government efforts to reunite Elian with his father, who has been waiting in Washington since April 6. He wants to return to Cuba.
But the appeals judges expressed support for efforts by Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez to win an asylum hearing and questioned the Immigration and Naturalization Service's handling of the case.
''According to the record, plaintiff - although a young child - has expressed a wish that he not be returned to Cuba,'' the judges wrote.
''It appears that never have INS officials attempted to interview plaintiff about his own wishes,'' the ruling said. ''It is not clear that the INS, in finding plaintiff's father to be the only proper representative, considered all of the relevant factors - particularly the child's separate and independent interests in seeking asylum.''
There was no immediate reaction from the Justice Department, and the INS said it was preparing a statement. One issue under debate as Justice Department officials met this afternoon was whether their previous promise to that court not to remove Elian from great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez's home still applied.
The ruling, which could be appealed to the full circuit court, is considered a critical step in the international custody dispute that has lasted for nearly five months. It addressed an emergency order issued last week that delayed government efforts to bring Elian to Washington.
In Little Havana, Cuban Americans had feared that only the court order was keeping federal agents from attempting to remove Elian from the home of Lazaro Gonzalez. Earlier today, Attorney General Janet Reno said taking the boy by force was an option but she was trying to avoid any violence.
''There may come a time when there is no other alternative. But we've got to do it in a careful, thoughtful way,'' Reno had said.
Elian was rescued by two fishermen while clinging to an inner tube off the Florida Coast on Thanksgiving Day. He was among three people who survived, but his mother and 10 others fleeing Cuba drowned when their boat sank.
Lazaro Gonzalez was awarded temporary custody and the boy's Miami relatives have been caring for him ever since. They insist Elian will be better off living with them, and argue that the boy would be psychologically harmed and face persecution if he is returned to Cuba.
Their bid for an asylum hearing is also before the appeals court, with oral arguments scheduled for May 11.
The Clinton administration, however, has pressed for the reunion of Elian with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, saying only he can speak for the boy on immigration matters. The court order had temporarily blocked anyone from taking Elian out of the country until it decides whether to hear the asylum claims.
The government has said Juan Miguel Gonzalez is willing to wait in the United States for the asylum issue to be settled - if he has custody of his son.
Since January, Reno and the government have repeatedly extended the deadline for Lazaro Gonzalez to surrender the boy. Last week, the nation's top law officer took the extraordinary step of flying to Miami to meet with family members.
But both sides failed to agree on details of a reunion. The government insists that Lazaro Gonzalez - referred to by federal attorneys as ''a mere distant relative'' - surrender custody of the boy, while the family has sought a meeting with Juan Miguel Gonzalez without conditions.
The appeals judges, however, noted that Lazaro Gonzalez is a ''blood relative'' and said his interests, ''to say the least, are not obviously hostile to plaintiff's interests.''
Commentary:
This story clearly shows that not all writers are seeing this as a simple case of a matter for the INS and Janet Reno to handle. Clearly, the uncle is not a distant unknown member of the Elián family. He quite possibly knew of the trip before Elián did! He may well have assured his nephew that he would keep confidential the reasons for the nephew to go along with the trip.
The real truth in this family custody battle is easily lost in a media event where an expert at propaganda like Castro uses all to his ends. He has been proven more right than wrong. Most Americans are tired of the story and would like Elián and his father to get ‘out of their hair’ so they can focus on something more important- like a baseball game!
Apparently the Federal Appeals panel has taken the time to make some pointed observations of the failure of the INS and the Reno staff to recognize that Elián may have a right to be heard too!
4-21-2000 Clinton issues pronouncement and Reno plans attack!
Clinton: Reunite Elian, His Dad
By GEORGE GEDDA
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton said a court ruling has stripped Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives of all arguments against transferring temporary custody of the boy to his father. ``That is the law,'' Clinton said amid reports that the government was preparing to forcibly take the 6-year-old boy.
Clinton commented Thursday, a day after a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Atlanta said Elian must remain in the United States until the court decides whether he should get an asylum hearing. A hearing was set for May 11.
The ruling was viewed by the Miami relatives and their allies as a victory, but Clinton said it reinforced the administration's case for Elian to be reunited with his father.
The Washington Post reported today that Attorney General Janet Reno has decided to remove Elian from his great-uncle's home in Miami and has instructed federal law enforcement officials to determine the best time to do so. The report quoted unidentified government officials as saying they expected to move by the middle of next week.
Asked about the report, Justice Department spokeswoman Carole Florman said Reno remained open to a voluntary settlement, but declined to discuss whether she has made any decision about forcibly removing the boy. She said, ``For obvious reasons, we've always said we wouldn't discuss a law enforcement action in advance.''
The New York Times, quoting government officials it did not name, said today that law enforcement action is now all but certain and would be carried out by immigration agents and federal marshals who have been quietly arriving in Miami in recent days.
A lawyer for the Miami relatives indicated today that the great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, who has control of Elian, and other family members will not assist federal agents' attempt to take the boy.
``So he's not going to cooperate?'' attorney Jose Garcia-Pedrosa was asked on CBS' ``The Early Show.''
``Without a psychological evaluation that says that that is in the best interest of the boy in the opinion of a professional, not a lawyer or an immigration official, that's correct,'' Garcia-Pedrosa replied.
Clinton, making his strongest statement to date on the case, said he knew of ``no conceivable argument'' against the custody transfer.
``I think he (the father) should be reunited with his son,'' the president said. ``That is the law. And the main argument of the family in Miami for not doing so has now been removed.
``Their main argument was if we let him go back to his father before the court rules, he might go back to Cuba. The court has now said he shouldn't go back to Cuba. The Justice Department agrees with that.''
Clinton generally has been standing back and leaving the decisions in the Elian case to Reno, who last week ordered the Miami relatives to turn over the boy. The family refused.
``The attorney general is leading the effort,'' presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart said Thursday. ``The president has been briefed and has had input. Is she making the decisions here? Yes.''
Less than two hours before Clinton spoke, Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, asked Americans to write to Clinton and Reno, urging them to act decisively to end the five-month father-son separation.
``Don't let them continue to abuse my son,'' the elder Gonzalez said, referring to the Miami relatives who have been caring for Elian since he was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast on Thanksgiving Day. Elian and two others survived, but his mother and 10 others fleeing Cuba drowned when their boat sank.
``I was promised that I was going to be reunited with my son,'' he said, speaking in Spanish near his temporary home in suburban Maryland. ``Two weeks have gone by and it hasn't happened. I have always understood, I have always thought, that the United States is a country which abided by its laws.''
He asked Americans ``to send message and write to the president ... to the attorney general of this country so they should act immediately (to) reunite me with my son,'' he said, speaking through a translator.
Thursday evening, Elian spoke on a cordless telephone in the yard outside his Miami relatives' home and blew kisses into the phone. Family spokesman Armando Gutierrez said the boy was talking to his father.
Lazaro Gonzalez offered to bring the boy to a meeting with his father after being assured by the court ruling that the boy could stay in the country, an attorney for the family, Linda Osberg-Braun, said Wednesday. But that promise seemed clouded by today's statement from another lawyer, Garcia-Pedrosa.
Previously, the Miami relatives had said they would meet the father only if it was without the boy. Juan Miguel Gonzalez's lawyer, Gregory Craig, said Thursday that discussions between his client and other family members can take place only after the father regains custody of Elian.
In Fort Lee, N.J., Vice President Al Gore urged Elian's feuding relatives to get together ``without government officials or lawyers'' to try to end the impasse. Earlier he had split with the administration by supporting permanent resident status for Elian, his father and other relatives in Cuba. “
Commentary:
With the moral pronouncement of the nation’s most prestigious proponent of living by the law- the U.S. President all but ordered the attack of the small family home in Miami where young Elián has been living since he was rescued from the ocean when his mother died. His father refused to come get him for four months. Now he is in Washington, D.C. living with his second wife, and another younger son by the second wife, with the Cuban political attaché to the U.S. Castro wants to watch and orchestrate?
By mid week, we will have evidence of the attack in Miami in the name of justice that fails to take into account any of the facts of the boy’s needs or desires. All are subordinated to the politiical need to conform to the Castro demand that Clinton and the majority of Americans simplistically choose as being right.
Soon the boy will be removed. We will not know how he is treated by the Cubans in Washington while he awaits the Court to determine that he must go back to Cuba with his father without a custody court involvement. It is to be a matter only for the INS! We will watch with satisfaction, thinking that justice has been done while the communist father and his leader take the boy back to be saved from the loving care bestowed upon him when the father refused to come and claim his son.
We will then wonder for a few years...what will happen to Elián. Most of us will forget about him. Many never paid attention to enough of the details to have much to forget. The American pursuit of pleasure will continue and the baseball season will replace this drama.
One day Elián will come back to see if his five months of U.S. experience of love were obliterated by Castro style ‘brain-washing’. It is possible that this young tree will be bent into a new direction of love for Fidel, not Marileysis or his father; of love of the system that fails to produce freedom or prosperity.
Elian Gonzalez Seized From Relatives' Home
Cuban Boy on Way to Reunion With Father
By ALAN CLENDENNING
.c The Associated Press
MIAMI (April 22) - Federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn today, firing pepper spray into an angry crowd as they took away the crying and screaming 6-year-old boy for a reunion in Washington with his Cuban father.
More than 20 agents in several white vans arrived at the home shortly after 5 a.m., using rams on the home's chain-link fence and front door to get inside. The boy was being hidden in a bedroom closet by his great-aunt and Donato Dalrymple, one of the fishermen who rescued him on Thanksgiving Day.
In the bedroom, an agent in green riot gear and goggles and holding an automatic rifle confronted Dalrymple holding the frightened child, an image captured by an Associated Press photographer and broadcast around the world. Agents then took Elian out of Dalrymple's arms.
A short time later, a woman and man brought Elian out of the home and put him in one of the vans, which sped off. Maria Elena Quesada, who was at the home, said Elian was screaming ''Help me! Help me! Don't take me away!'' in Spanish.
By 6 a.m., Elian was on a government plane headed for an airport near Washington and a reunion with his father. Juan Miguel Gonzalez was told about the raid as soon as Elian was safe and will meet his son at the airport, officials said.
''Juan Gonzalez wants to be with his son, and that will happen now,'' Attorney General Janet Reno said. She said she ''did until the final moments try to reach a voluntary solution,'' but over the weeks and months the dispute has gone on, ''the Miami relatives kept moving the goal post and raising the hurdles.''
She said the boy would stay in the United States pending further court action over the question of asylum, as the federal appeals court ruled.
''Elian is safe and no one was seriously hurt,'' she said.
Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the Spanish-speaking, female agent who carried the boy had a soothing message - worked out in advance:
''This may seem very scary. It will soon be better.'' The boy was told he would be taken to ''papa,'' the word he used for his father.
Elian was given a physical by a government doctor before he got on the plane, a government official said earlier, speaking on condition of anonymity. On the plane were the female immigration agent who carried Elian from the house, a psychiatrist, a flight surgeon and the immigration agent who commanded the operation.
Elian was described as subdued and calm on the plane.
He was given a play kit including toys, Play-Doh, an airplane, a map and a watch, the official said.
In Havana today, Cubans wept in happiness. In an official statement read over state radio stations, the government urged Cubans to ''maintain calm and avoid public displays'' over the event
But in Miami, under a brilliant, clear sky, crowds began to gather in Little Havana as the city slowly awoke to the realization that Elian was gone. By midmorning, drivers on one highway demonstrated with a slowdown.
Police closed off 35 blocks around the home after dawn as people at a street intersection burned debris and yelled at a line of officers in riot gear.
''We have our office in full mobilization,'' said Lt. Bill Schwartz, a police spokesman. ''They're getting ready to form two field forces to take their positions if necessary.''
The siege appeared to catch the family completely off guard. After daylight, the boy's cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez came out of the house and shouted to the crowd in words sprinkled with patriotic references to freedom and the land of opportunity.
She said the agents broke down the door yelling, '''Give us the (expletive) boy. We'll shoot. We'll shoot. We'll shoot,''' as she begged them not to take him or let him see the guns.
''How can this boy be OK when he had a gun to his head?'' she said. ''I thought this was a country of freedom.''
But Reno said, ''the Miami relatives rejected our efforts, leaving us no other option but the enforcement action.'' She also said the gun was not pointed directly at the boy.
But Ms. Gonzalez and Kendall Coffey, an attorney for the Miami relatives, said they were in the middle of negotiations and had been put on hold by the mediator when the agents arrived.
''We're angry and disgusted,'' Coffey said. ''We were in communication with the mediator handling negotiations and discussion with the government when they knocked the door down.''
It was a swift and violent step in the international custody dispute over the little boy rescued off the Florida coast nearly five months ago. His Miami relatives have sought to retain the temporary custody they were granted in November, while the U.S. government has sought to reunite the boy with his father.
''Assassins!'' yelled some of the approximately 100 protesters, some of whom climbed over the barricades in an attempt to stop the agents. The agents, wearing Immigration and Naturalization Service shirts, were armed with automatic weapons.
''The world is watching!'' yelled Delfin Gonzalez, the brother of the little boy's caretaker and great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez.
Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the anti-Castro Democracy Movement, was bleeding from one ear after the raid. He said he was knocked out by an agent using a rifle as a club.
''They were animals,'' said Jess Garcia, a bystander. ''They gassed women and children to take a defenseless child out of here. We were assaulted with no provocation''
Miami police executives, including the chief, had some notice of the raid but officers at the scene had only a moment's notice, said Schwartz, the department spokesman.
The raid came amid reports of progress in talks to immediately transfer custody of the boy to his father. Reno was at her office early this morning engaged in a long-distance negotiation that began Friday afternoon.
All of that ended in failure early today.
Carlos Gonzalez said he and several others tried to form a human chain in front of the door but were forced back at gunpoint.
Inside, Dalrymple held Elian in his arms as the agents arrived. He said agents told him ''give me the boy or I'll shoot you.''
''They took this kid like a hostage in the nighttime,'' he said.
The government and Juan Miguel Gonzalez insisted that any deal contain an immediate transfer of custody of Elian to him, but the Miami relatives defied Reno's order switching custody.
The relatives have cared for Elian since he was found clinging to an inner tube in the Atlantic after a boat carrying his mother and other Cubans capsized, killing her and 10 others. They and the hundreds of Cubans who gathered for days outside their home don't want the boy returned to a Cuba ruled by Fidel Castro.
The deal that was under discussion called for Juan Miguel Gonzalez and Elian, Lazaro and Marisleysis to move to one of two foundation-owned conference centers near Washington, according to a government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The plan called for formal custody to transfer immediately from the Miami relatives to the father, the official said. The two sides also couldn't agree on how long they might live together pending the end of the court battle.
The Miami relatives lost a U.S. District Court battle to get a political asylum hearing for Elian. An appeals court has ordered Elian to stay in this country until it hears that case, but did not bar Reno from switching custody.
Reno met for briefly Friday at the Justice Department with Juan Miguel, who asked Reno to give him a date certain when he would get his son back.
Afterward, Reno said she told him ''that I could not commit to a particular course of action or timetable.''
Commentary:
This story is not over yet! But, it now includes another example of how Janet Reno works when she can’t get her way with just the law! A pre-dawn raid when the defense is weakest on the day before Easter is the perfect time for the brilliantly executed ‘gestapo-like’ raid to happen. Point a gun at a man’s head and he probably will do what you want. If not, well you just blow him away and secure the political prize! A sleepy, but suddenly alert and screaming boy of six!
Janet and her boss Bill must now be on the radio and TV exclaiming to the world how wonderful a victory for their law! The boy is now with the father, safe in D.C. in a communist controlled house. Happy Easter! But then Cuban communists know that Christ is inferior to Fidel! With help from Bill and Janet, Lenin has again been proven right- “Don’t worry, they will give us everything we need”.
The Cubans in Miami are now enraged! The next phase of the war is now under way. How will they respond? They don’t really have any place to vent their anger.
Yesterday, this surprise attack should have been anticipated. Elián should have been spirited away to a safe place on the U.S. Navy bombing zone of Vieques- a beach enclave where the US government is afraid to interfere with about eleven camps of dissidents, each with a different reason to think that they are fighting for peace in Vieques- a claim that is blown way out of proportion to the reality.
Now the Reno justification report:
Reno Defends Use of Force in Retrieving Elian
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (April 22) - Attorney General Janet Reno today defended the decision to take Elian Gonzalez by force, saying the government believed agents might face armed resistance in ending the standoff.
Reno said the government received information that there might be guns ''perhaps in the crowd, perhaps in the house'' and agents had to be prepared.
She said the government will ''take every step necessary'' to ensure that the 6-year-old Cuban boy does not leave the United States with his father until the court battle over his custody is resolved.
The Miami relatives left the government no choice but to move in forcefully and take the boy, she said.
''I informed the parties that time had run out,'' she said after an all-night session of negotiations that ended with the boy's seizure before dawn.
Associated Press photos taken during the seizure showed one of the fishermen who rescued Elian at sea five months ago backed into a closet, clutching the boy, as an agent pointing his weapon was about to take him.
Asked about the photo, Reno said the gun ''was pointed to the side'' and the agent's ''finger was not on the trigger.''
Reno did not say whether any weapons had been found in the house.
Authorities outside fired pepper spray to control the relatives' angry and distraught supporters.
''We have been told on occasion that people would have weapons to prevent it from happening,'' Reno said.
She told a news conference that eight agents were in the house for just three minutes. A female agent spoke to Elian in Spanish as she took him from the house, where he has stayed since his Thanksgiving Day rescue off the Florida coast.
Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the agent's soothing message to Elian - worked out in advance - was , ''This may seem very scary. It will soon be better.'' The boy was told he would be taken to ''papa,'' the word he used for his father.
Reno said after she set the raid in motion, the intermediary for Elian's Miami relatives called with a counteroffer.
''I did until the final moments try to reach a voluntary solution,'' she said.
Reno said the boy needs to ''have quiet time and to be with his father.'' As she spoke, Elian was being flown to a Washington-area airport for a reunion with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
Father and son talked by telephone during Elian's flight to Washington.
While an appeals court deals with the custody dispute, Reno said, ''We will take every step necessary to ensure that Elian does not leave the country.''
The attorney general expressed frustration in the government's dealings with the Miami relatives during the five-month-long standoff.
''Every time we thought we had achieved what we wanted, it wasn't enough,'' she said. ''It was just one step after another in which they moved the goalpost.''
Greg Craig, lawyer for the boy's father, expressed relief that the standoff was finally over and said the use of force was necessary to get Elian away from his Miami relatives.
Reno ''walked the extra mile and then walked yet another mile,'' he said in Washington.
''We agreed to virtually all the demands contained in the attorney general's proposal, but we would not compromise on the most critical issue of custody,'' Craig said.
Reno had led extraordinary all-night negotiations trying to resolve the custody dispute after Miami civic leaders serving as intermediaries proposed a settlement.
Proposals and counterproposals flew through the night by telephone and facsimile machine among the Miami house, the Justice Department and the Washington office of the father's lawyer.
Specifically, the proposal called for Elian, his father and the two Miami relatives who have been the boy's chief caregivers - Lazaro Gonzalez and his daughter, Marisleysis - to move to one of two foundation-owned conference centers near Washington - either Wye Plantation, a center on Maryland's Eastern shore that has been used for Mideast peace conferences, or Airlie House near Warrenton, Va., according to a government official, who requested anonymity.
The plan called for formal custody to transfer immediately from the Miami relatives to the boy's Cuban father - something the relatives have refused to accept.
Another sticking point was the length of the joint occupation of the compound. The intermediaries proposed that all family members stay until a court appeal is completed, in late May at the earliest. But Juan Miguel Gonzalez faxed a counterproposal back in late evening that called for a much shorter joint stay, the official said.
During the evening, Gonzalez traveled from his temporary home in the Maryland suburbs to the downtown offices of his lawyer, Gregory Craig, to review proposals forwarded by Reno. He went home before midnight.
Lawyers assembled at Lazaro Gonzalez' Miami home Friday night. A fax machine was carried in, then back out when they went to a local restaurant. At mid-evening, the crowd of Cuban exiles outside was read a letter to Reno that suggested resistance on the key issue. In it, the relatives' pediatrician, Armando Acevedo, wrote that it would be ''harmful ... (and) inhumane'' to remove Elian from their home.”
One thing is now clear. Elián will have a day or two of kicking and screaming and crying. But, he will be subdued with drugs- not love. If not pills, with shots in his body to “help him over his trauma of five months in captivity outside of the communist Utopia! Of course, some might think the gun battle display might have frightened him too.
More....
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TV Viewers Awake To Elian Raid
By DAVID BAUDER
.c The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) - Television viewers awoke today to repeated video images of the pre-dawn raid to snatch Elian Gonzalez, pictures of a federal agent running to a van clutching a frightened little boy.
CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC were all covering the dramatic development in the ongoing custody battle live by 6:15 a.m.
Their live footage showed people rapidly arriving at the house in Miami's Little Havana section where the 6-year-old had been kept, no doubt alerted by television that the moment they feared had taken place.
The most arresting pictures on TV, however, came from a photographer working for The Associated Press. His pictures showed a federal agent in the home, pointing a gun, and Elian being held in a closet by Donato Dalrymple, one of the fishermen who had rescued him in November.
The photographer, Alan Diaz, had been waiting in a house adjacent to the Gonzalez residence. When he heard a noise outside the relatives' house, he hopped a fence to enter the home.
It was not immediately clear why there were no video pictures from the Gonzalez home. Television networks had been talking with the family about having a camera present to record any raid.
Unlike Diaz's photos, the only video pictures from inside the home depicted the aftermath of the raid, showing religious icons and toys scattered about.
TV pictures from outside the home showed federal agents squirting pepper spray on bystanders. Some in the crowd tossed chairs and other objects at the government's white vans as they sped away with Elian.
A tearful, shaking Dalrymple was quickly interviewed by TV networks.
``My God, what's happened to our judicial system?'' he said on NBC. ``What has happened in America? Please, America, don't fail this community.''
An angry Miami Mayor Joe Carollo made the rounds denouncing the government. On NBC, he called the agents ``thugs.'' On CNN, he said it was one of the most shameful acts he had ever seen.
``What they did here was a crime,'' Carollo said on CBS. ``Tell the country that these are atheists. They don't believe in God ... I felt that I could not trust our government any longer.''
ABC was caught somewhat flatfooted by the raid. It broke in to children's programming briefly at 6:30, and didn't begin continuous coverage until anchor Elizabeth Vargas appeared shortly before 7 a.m.
CBS's Dan Rather was the first of the three top network anchors to appear, at 6:50 a.m., and was interviewed by CBS correspondents as something of an elder statesman. Rather had interviewed Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian's father, last weekend.”
The government almost got the dirty deed done without pictoral coverage of the seizure. An AP photographer, staying next door, was alert enough to be ready to jump into the open house and take the critical pictures! Castro’s U.S. henchmen on the job, promoted by law and order chiefs Reno and Clinton- the two great moralists of our time!
Elian's Surrogate Mom Anguished
By RACHEL LACORTE
.c The Associated Press
MIAMI (April 22) - The blow of losing Elian Gonzalez may be felt the most by Marisleysis Gonzalez, the 21-year-old cousin who cared for him for the past five months like a mother.
In an anguished and haggard voice, Gonzalez described a chaotic scene early today as armed federal agents stormed into her home to take the 6-year-old boy and reunite him with his Cuban father.
''They said, 'Give me the boy or we're going to shoot,''' she recounted while sitting on the patio of her Little Havana home, a few hours after the stench of pepper gas had spread throughout the neighborhood.
Gonzalez said she begged: ''Don't let the boy see this! I'll give you the boy! Please don't let the boy see the gun!''
Instead, she said, the armed agents in riot gear found the boy cowering in a closet in her parents' bedroom and took him from the arms of Donato Dalrymple, one of the fisherman who rescued Elian after his mother and 10 others died at sea last fall.
''He was screaming and crying, 'Don't take me!''' she said. ''I never thought they would do this to a kid. He's seen so much.''
On leave from her bank job, Gonzalez was constantly at Elian's side, escorting him to school or playfully carrying him on her back. She was also among the family's most prominent speakers, constantly lobbying against Elian's return to Fidel Castro's Cuba.
But the continuous pressure and media spotlight appeared to wear on her. Marisleysis was hospitalized at least four times since Elian was placed in her home after his Thanksgiving rescue.
In between two trips to the hospital, she traveled to Washington to testify in the Senate on the boy's behalf.
''I don't know how much more I can take,'' she told The Miami Herald in January.
As she recalled the raid, she burst into tears as she lifted a broken piece of Elian's bed: ''They trashed my room.''
Justice Department officials said the boy was unharmed and described him as calm and subdued in the hours after the raid. His cousin wondered how that could be and said she hoped to travel to Washington to visit him this weekend.
''How can this boy be OK when he had a gun to his head?'' she asked. ''I thought this was a country of freedom.'' Attorney General Janet Reno said the gun was not pointed at the boy and that agents had guns because officials had ''received information'' someone in the crowd or the home could be armed.
Gonzalez said she had told Reno personally she didn't want the boy taken by force.
''She lied to this country and, to me, she doesn't have a heart,'' Gonzalez said.
Lawyers for the family had just been put on hold during telephone conversations with mediators attempting to persuade the family to hand the boy over to his father when agents broke in shortly after 5 a.m.
While the pounding went on, Dalrymple grabbed the boy from the arms of his great-uncle, who was on the couch, and sped to the bedroom.
In the bedroom, an agent in green riot gear and goggles and carrying an automatic rifle confronted Dalrymple holding the frightened child. Agents then took Elian out of Dalrymple's arms and took the boy away.
After the raid, Gonzalez staggered as she walked around her home. She wept repeatedly through the morning as she recalled the loss of Elian.
''If I am asleep and he wakes up, and he doesn't see me, he cries,'' she said.
A Firsthand Account
Of Child Abuse, Castro Style
By Armando Valladares. Mr. Valladares was U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission from 1986-1990. He is the author of thebest-seller "Against All Hope," which will be rereleased in October by Encounter Books.
I was in solitary confinement in Fidel Castro's tropical gulag -- where I spent 22 years for refusing to pledge allegiance to the Communist regime -- when I heard a child's voice whimpering. "Get me out of here! Get me out of here! I want to see my mommy!" I thought my senses were failing me. I could not believe that they had
imprisoned a child in those dungeons. Later on, I learned
the story of Robertico.
He was 12 years old when they arrested him. A captain in
the political police had left his gun in his open car. When
he returned to the car he saw the child playing with it. He
slapped Robertico and took him into custody. The child
was sent to an adult prison in Havana, where he was
condemned to spend the rest of his youth. He would not
be released until he reached the age of 18.
Robertico was sent to a galley with common criminals. Within a few days, those soulless prisoners raped him. He spent several days in the hospital for treatment of
rents and hemorrhages as a result. By the time he was
released, his file had been stamped "homosexual" and he
was taken to the prison area reserved for this classification.
Robertico was so slender that his body fit through the bars of the cells. One night he slipped out to watch cartoons on the guard's television. When he was
discovered, he was sent to the punishment cells. He was
taken out of those cells three times a week for injections
because he was suffering from a venereal disease. A
guard told me he was so young he did not even have pubic hair.
When I think of Elian Gonzalez, Robertico always comes to mind. This is the Cuban society to which Elian may return: a society where all rights are violated in the interest of subordinating all individuals to the will of the supreme leader.
Sadly, some in America still believe that the Cuban revolution was a triumph of good. It is worth remembering that many also refused to believe the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps. Then, the world had to wait for eyewitness accounts from journalists and photographic
evidence from their camera crews before finally accepting the horrible reality of what had happened.
Many other Americans seem to believe that even if
savage things once happened under Fidel Castro, the
situation has now changed. Yet the same dictatorship,
tortured thousands of political prisoners, is still wielding absolute power over the Cuban people. Fidel Castro has never recanted or apologized for the atrocities that have been reported by those who have escaped his grasp.
And there is a stream of evidence that the brutality andrepression continues. Last month the United Nations
Human Rights Commission condemned Cuba, for the eighth time, for its systematic violation of human rights. Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department have done the same.
It is standard practice around the world to transfer the custody of children to the surviving parent when the other dies. That is what is normal. But Cuba is not a normal place. If Elian is returned to Cuba, he will be sent back to a place where most people dream every day of escape. It is an island prison where a cruel tyranny has now lasted almost half a century. A fifth of the country's population -- around two million people -- have fled, and more than half-a-million have been courageous enough to apply for visas to leave.
Outside of Cuba, Elian will grow up as a free person with a free conscience. But if he returns, he will be
"reprogrammed," as Castro himself has made clear. The
Cuban government has already shown the world the residence where psychiatrists and psychologists will instruct Elian on how to despise and hate anyone who is against communism -- including his own mother, who gave her life to bring him to freedom. In a few years she'll be nothing but a traitor to the Revolution. If Elian returns to Cuba his father will have no authority whatsoever to make decisions related to his education. Cuban "law" gives that authority to the Communist government.
Children are indoctrinated in Cuba from the moment they start to read. They are taught that the Communist party is owed loyalty above everything else. And they are taught that they must denounce their parents if they criticize or do anything against the Revolution or its leaders.
For Elian, absolute control by the Communist party will begin in elementary school with the so-called
"Cumulative School File." This is a little like a report card, but it is not limited to academic achievements. It
measures "revolutionary integration," not only of the student but also of his family. This file documents
whether or not the child and family participate in mass
demonstrations, or whether they belong to a church or
religious group. The file accompanies the child for life,
and is continually updated. His university options will
depend on what that file says. If he does not profess a
truly Marxist life, he will be denied many career possibilities.
From his elementary school days on, he will hear that God does not exist, and that religion is "the opium of the masses." If any student speaks about God, his parents will be called to the school, warned that they are
"confusing" the child and threatened. The Code for
Children, Youth and Family provides for a three-year
prison sentence for any parent who teaches a child ideas contrary to communism. The code is very clear: No Cuban parent has the right to "deform" the ideology of his children, and the state is the true "Father." Article 8 of that same code reads, "Society and the state work for the
efficient protection of youth against all influences contrary to their Communist formation." It is mandatory for all Cuban children over the age of 12 to do time in a
Communist work camp in the countryside. Away from all
parental supervision for nine months at a time, children
there suffer from venereal disease, as well as teenage
pregnancy, which inevitably ends in forced abortion.
When the reprogramming plan for Elian is complete, we
will see him repeating the slogans of the Revolution. He
will have lost his liberty, his ability to dream, his youthfulinnocence, and perhaps even hope.
And should he ever do anything that angers the regime, we must hope he will not end like Robertico, cornered in a cell, calling for his mother. This time, she will not be ableto save him.
Commentary: May 5, 2000
It is first hand knowledge of this type of communist advantage that made the Miami Cubanos leave everything and risk all to get to freedom! They wanted to keep Elián with us. We refuse to believe that he could want to stay and not go back to the father that loves him so much that he probably gave his first wife the ok to 'steal' him away from Castro's state and the father's nominal custody.
Of course, the father can't admit any of this or try to defect without killing his parents while losing his special place of honor in the Castro regime. I will pray that somehow he can ask for asylum and give his mother to Castro to kill, but I doubt that he will want to do it. He is a member of the party..not a commoner.
May 25, 2000 update:
The news is rather quiet. Apparently Elián and family have moved out of the estate in Md. for some new digs to wait a bit longer for the Court to decide if Elián is to have a hearing on seeking asylum. A rather ludicrous expectation on the part of the folks in Miami. How can they expect their six year old relative to defy his father in such a court!
Castro will win the next round too and the Miami folks can not find a way to abandon the cause of saving Elián. So they must let the court decide that the father wins for Fidel. It will be a few more years before Elián gets back to Florida.
Update of June 23, 2000
The news is full of the story, especially on PBS, that show that Elián's father has won a victory in the court in Atlanta because the full array of Judges failed to call for a full review of the determination of the panel of three that sided with the Justice Dept. that this is an INS matter, not a family custody case.
Fidel, with help from Janet Reno and Bill Clinton have managed to win the wrong argument. This was a custody case, but the media made it into a political one because a lot of vibrant folks in Miami are experienced in dealing with Castro and did not want to subject a little boy to more of what they experienced.They made for a great show- especially when the heavy handed Justice Dept. gang attacked.
So, the big winner is Fidel, who now looks like a hero and a statesman to those in the world willing to let his clever rhetoric suck them in. His revolution is now safe and he says he need not worry about succession (how can he when he dies?) What he means is that the Cubans have perfected communism and only the odious American embargo keeps his people from enjoying a superior standard of living!That 'baloney' is easy to sell to some people.
Even free of communism, it will take a hundred years for Cuba to become first class at anything except maybe tourism, which could do a lot for its economy. But, it will take a lot of catching up in terms of infrastructure before even that can happen.
The big loser is Elián in the short-term. But, his doctrinarie father may come to discover the truth and some day find his way back out of Cuba along with Elián! For now, I suspect that the Supreme Court will reject the call for a hearing this late in the term, and it will be easy for it to state that it should not cause a delay in the repatriation of a boy and his father to good ole Cuba.
Yes, those who tired of the story long ago, will be all saying that it is about time. They will fail to be aware of, much less understand, that if the woman who survived the terrible boat ride had been Elián's mother, his father's family in Miami would have taken them both in and the father would never have considered, even four months later,coming to claim his son. Fidel would not have insisted upon and maybe even funded a bit of the cost, although he probably foisted that bill off to the National Council of Churches.
As Lenin told early communists in the twenties, in fighting your political enemies of the West, never worry about what you need to win- they will give it to you! Once more Fidel has shown this to be the case. Unfortunately, a little boy became a pawn when all that was needed was a friendly custody court to have ruled months ago that with the father not present, and family pledged to care for Elián, everyone would have won! Now it is only Fidel!
Only the Supreme Court edict remains. It too will vindicate Fidel and the puppet he sent to retrieve a lost son, four months after the father knew where he was! We will still wonder if the father planned the dangerous trip to give his son a better life, or if he somehow wanted to keep his second wife, new son, and oh,yeah, the first one too.
UPdate 6-28-00
Well the last chapter of the Elián saga may have played out on this date when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively agreed that a Cuban father can come to the U.S. four months after abandoning his son and get the U.S. government to spend $1.4 million in legal expense to insure that the law is upheld in a just manner for Elián and his father and, of course, his mentor, Fidel Castro! The final result is that the boy is now back in Cuba with his grandmothers and his father’s second family.
What did all of this prove? Well, it certainly showed that the media was able to turn a boring story that should have been a routine child custody case into a national ‘best seller’ with the political dimensions leaving the custody matter in the dust.
Nobody has ever asked, “What would have happened if no relatives were in Miami to have come to the hospital and take the frightened ship wreck survivor to a loving home?” Would Janet Reno have volunteered to care for the boy or asked the INS to do it?
More significantly, “what has all of this done to the family that cared for the boy? What is the impact on the boy’s future life? The picture of his arrival in Cuba showed a tiny face full of apprehension, in spite of what must have been an intensive effort in Washington to condition the boy to going back to the heaven he left with his mother so long ago.
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