Cay: Cubans fleeing Castro's communist paradise

A group of Cuban refugees has been taken to Grand Cayman and detained after the boats they were travelling in were declared unseaworthy.

The 20 Cubans, who said they were refugees, were rounded up on Cayman Brac early Friday morning after two of the boats that they were travelling in were destroyed on the reef and a third was declared unseaworthy.

Last Wednesday five Cuban refugees who arrived in the Cayman Islands last month were returned. A further 19 applications are still being processed.

Also, something seems to be rotten in the Caymans.

Once again, the issue of the treatment and eventual fate of Cuban refugees arriving on our shores has reared its head.

As usual, part of the problem lies in the perpetual lack of transparency on the part of the Cayman Islands Government.

In this instance, we have been told for several years that the Government signed a bilateral agreement or memorandum of understanding with Cuba, which purportedly requires us to repatriate all Cuban refugees arriving in the Cayman Islands.

The first problem with this is that, despite numerous requests over the years, the Government has so far failed to provide the media or the public at large with a copy of the agreement in question.

Assuming, however, that there is such an agreement, what was the Cayman Islands Government doing contracting directly with another sovereign power in the first place? Only Britain, as the colonial power, has that authority, or the ability to consent to such an arrangement.

Furthermore, an agreement in such terms flies in the face of various international treaties and conventions governing the treatment of refugees. How, therefore, could either Britain or the Cayman Islands countenance an agreement contravening those treaties?

This prima facie inconsistency, coupled with the Government’s persistent refusal to make the agreement public, naturally leads to the suspicion that something is not quite as it should be.

Sounds like the Cayman Islands need a wet foot-dry foot work around.