The Tribune’s recent editorial “Moral Law is the Answer in the Cuban case” is a resounding argument in favour of sending to the US, and not to Cuba, the two Cuban dentists held in our wretched Detention Centre, as they fervently desire.
I would like to provide an analogy from recent history. At the end of World War II, Allied forces discovered in AXIS prisoner-of-war camps thousands of Russian soldiers who had been seized during the long campaign on the Eastern Front and would now have to be released. Under the brutal policy of the Soviet Government, any troops who surrendered or allowed themselves to be captured were regarded as no better than cowards and deserters and were likely to be shot or imprisoned when repatriated.
Naturally, these unfortunates were desperate to be accepted as refugees into Western Europe.
Nevertheless, under an understanding between the UK Government and the blood-thirsty regime of Josef Stalin, the greatest mass killer of history, the British military were ordered to force these wretches at bayonet point into box-cars headed back to Mother Russia. Often pitched battles resulted, and several British army units nearly mutinied at being compelled to carry out this inhuman policy dictated from London.
Several books have- documented these terrible events. The British Government made only feeble efforts to defend its policy, as required to assure post-war peace with the Soviets. But this example of the “let’s be nice to Uncle Joe” syndrome soon became universally condemned as one of the blackest stains on Great Britain’s generally humanitarian record.
Equally, returning the two dentists to Fidel Castro, when their families are waiting to welcome them in Florida, would be one of the blackest marks on Bahamian history. So we have a “memorandum of understanding” with Cuba possibly requiring their return. So what? Any sovereign government has the right to abrogate a treaty for higher Reasons of State, and here we have two such compelling Reasons:
1) To obey the moral law of compassion to individuals.
2) To maintain good relations with the United States, a far warmer, and more useful, friend than the Republic of Cuba.
Fidel’s swaggering threat to flood The Bahamas with refugees should be taken with the contempt it deserves, as the futile gasp of a failing and unloved tyrant. And surely the United States will be willing and able to deploy its vast maritime resources to block any such invasion if Fidel should try it.
It is shocking that after ten months of detention our Government still has not made the obvious decision, that is both humane and rational.
RICHARD COULSON – Nassau, Bahamas
