Ballplayers may yet be sent back

By DON BOHNING
Herald Staff Writer

Had the nine Cubans rescued in Bahamian waters Friday night not included baseball players, they would likely have attracted little more attention than the more than 400 would-be defectors who have been sent back to Havana in the past two years.

The repatriations have been carried out under a Jan. 12, 1996, accord in which Cuba agreed to accept the repatriation of up to 30 a month of its citizens arriving illegally in the Bahamas after Aug. 4, 1994.

The latest repatriation came Dec. 23, 1997, when 35 Cubans -- slightly more than the agreed-on maximum -- were returned to Havana on a flight chartered by the Bahamian government. Each repatriation, says Wright, costs the Bahamian government about $7,000, including the cost of the charter plane.

It was the fourth such flight of 1997 and brought to about 400 the number of Cubans returned since the agreement was signed, Carlton Wright, deputy permanent secretary in the Bahamas Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Training, said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

Wright, the point man on repatriations to both Haiti and Cuba, said another 151 Cubans remain in the Carmichael Road Detention Center, including the nine picked up Sunday and 10 more on Monday.

Haitians also being detained

About 60 Haitians, including 40 picked up in a boat off Nassau on Sunday, are also in the detention center, a onetime primary school converted in the spring of 1994. Wright said some 1,200 Haitians were repatriated in 1997 and another 100 within the past month.

At the time the Cuban repatriation agreement was signed in 1996, Bahamian Foreign Minister Janet Bostwick told Parliament, ``We recognize that we will encounter some protestations and resistance, both locally and internationally.

``It is, however, an action we can no longer avoid,'' Bostwick said. ``We are all too well aware of the problems our small society has encountered because of the unabated influx of undocumented persons into the Bahamas, due entirely to our geographical proximity to the United States of America.''

All those Cubans arriving illegally are screened by both the Bahamian government and representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to determine whether they qualify as political refugees under U.N. conventions.

Political asylum claims

Wright said between 75 and 80 Cubans had been granted political asylum in the Bahamas, based on recommendations made to the government by the UNHCR after the screenings.

He said representatives from the UNHCR office in Washington are expected in the Bahamas shortly to interview the 19 refugees who arrived Sunday and Monday.

The other exception to the repatriations also involved baseball players. It came in December when Orlando ``El Duque'' Hernandez, half-brother of Florida Marlins' pitcher Livan Hernandez, was rescued in Bahamian waters fleeing Cuba. They were allowed to go on to Costa Rica when the government there granted them asylum. Hernandez arrived in the United States last week after signing a multimillion-dollar contract with the New York Yankees.

Wright cautioned that just because Hernandez and his four companions were allowed to go on to Costa Rica doesn't necessarily mean the same thing will happen with the latest group of ballplayers.

``Whether those who came this time will have a similar decision made in their case is still to be decided,'' Wright said.