Bahamas claims that video of Cubans being kicked is fraudulent

Posted on Tuesday, 06.18.13

Bahamas claims that video of Cubans being kicked is fraudulent
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM

A video purporting to show a Bahamian guard kicking Cuban migrants
detained in Nassau has been branded a forgery by the Nassau government
but sparked a call for a protest Wednesday at the Bahamas consulate in
Miami.

The video was taken with a hidden cellular phone by one of the 30 Cubans
held in the Nassau Detention Center, according to the Spanish-language
television channel América TeVé in Miami, which first broadcast it on
Friday.

The Miami-based Democracy Movement urged protesters to honk their car
and truck horns as they drive past the Bahamian consulate in downtown
Miami starting at noon on Wednesday.

Cuban migrants intercepted by Bahamian authorities on their way to U.S.
shores and detained in Nassau have long complained of abuses, from
beatings by guards to rats, lice and cockroaches in the detention
center. Most are eventually deported to Cuba.

Fred Mitchell, Bahamas minister of foreign affairs and immigration,
issued a statement dismissing the video as "a complete falsehood and an
outrageous concoction" and "a manufactured attempt to create a damaging
and defamatory impression of The Bahamas."

He added that the video shows no faces, that the accent of the "guard"
heard screaming at the Cubans is not Bahamian and that its setting does
not appear to match the interior of the Nassau Detention Center.

"We have had the video examined by the Royal Bahamas Defence Force and
it is being further reviewed by the Royal Bahamas Police Force,"
Mitchell said in the statement, published over the weekend on the
Website of the Bahamas Weekly.

America TeVe broadcast gruesome photos in early June, also taken with
cell phones, of some of the Cuban detainees in Nassau who sewed their
lips together to protest the center's conditions and their detention.
One put a lock through his upper and lower lips.

The video purports to show a guard retaliating for the publication of
those photos. It shows the lower half of someone wearing camouflaged
pants and black military boots kicking and stomping on what seem like
four Cuban detainees cowering on the floor.

One male voice is heard shouting "This is my country!"

America TeVe on Friday also quoted one Cuban detainee as saying that the
group had been beaten severely, and broadcast still photos of one Cuban
bleeding from the face and another showing a baton-shaped red welt
across his bare back.

Mitchell's statement said the Bahamas government has "referred the
matter to our lawyers" and that the Acting Consul General in Miami "has
been instructed to make the strongest protest to the station over this
matter."

"The Bahamas government does not beat those in its custody. All
detainees are treated with respect and in accordance with all applicable
conventions and with human dignity and courtesy," he said.

But after so thoroughly dismissing the video as a fabrication, the final
paragraph of the statement said the government planned to investigate.

"A follow up investigation is being done to seek to find out if by some
remote chance there is any aspect of this that bears a scintilla of
truth," he declared. "We are confident that there is no truth to it but
do so out of an abundance of caution."

Source: "Bahamas claims that video of Cubans being kicked is fraudulent
- Cuba - MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/18/3457987/bahamas-video-of-cubans-being.html