Cubans attack refugees again

Press, 9 May 1980, Page 6

Cubans attack refugees again

[NZPA-Reuter Havana J Supporters of President I Fidel Castro’s Communist [Government yesterday beat up, stoned and jeered at hundreds of Cubans seeking emigration papers. Albert Clack, of Reuters , writes: I - saw a group of [middle-aged people being! stoned by youths as a | woman screamed: “Kill them. Kill them.” A young woman punched an elderly man in the back, another woman slapped a woman’s face shouting “Get out, scum,” and a youth seized a bag from a middle-

aged woman and trampled on its contents, including her identity card. Crowds of would-be emigrants had gathered in the Miramar district of Havana, after word circulated that] anyone wishing to leave' Cuba could apply at an! Office there. ; Appointment slips were j distributed after the office]

closed, but people trying to leave peacefully were pursued through nearby streets by a shouting crowd of Government supporters. It is the second attack on would-be refugees within a week. The first occurred outside the visa office run by the United States. Some 400 Cubans took refuge in the office in fear after the attack and later the Americans said they were closing the Office until the Cubans

had taken steps to stop such attacks. The United States accused Cuba of encouraging the attackers. In Key West, American authorities have arrested 12 Cubans who refugees allege beat would-be exiles as they awaited passage to the. United States.

i A Florida state official ■'■said yesterday that refugees claimed the men were guarding Cubans waiting at the port of Mariel for boats to take them across the Florida Strait to Key West. He said the men left along with the thousands of! Cubans fleeing their homeland in the exodus that ibegan on April 23. i The other refugees cheered I when the men were taken • away in vans by the Border Patrol on Tuesday, he said. “If they had been allowed’ Ito stay in the compound I with the other refugees they (would not have survived the might,” he said. The official said no formal charges had been made against them and their cases were under investigation. According to unofficial Coast Guard figures, more than 28.000 Cubans had arrived in Key West by yesterday and thousands more were expected daily.