MIAMI, United States. – This Saturday, officials from the Southwest airline, at the Fort Lauderdale airport, north of Miami, informed the Cuban activist and professor Omara Ruiz Urquiola that she could not board a plane to return to Cuba due to the disposition of the Cuban authorities. Island.
“They didn’t let me fly,” Omara announced in a live broadcast medium CubitaNow. “[Southwest] It is another North American company that bows to the dictatorship. These are the results of engagementthe results of doing business with violators of human rights”, he sentenced.
The Cuban teacher explained that she had traveled to the United States to receive medical attention. “I came to treat myself for a medical issue. It was fulfilled. I recovered and [ahora] They won’t let me go back to my house. (…) I had to come because they were simply manipulating the drugs arbitrarily at the Oncology Hospital by order of State Security”, he explained.
He also said that right now he did not know what to do. “I cannot predict what will happen to me because I am in shock. I did not expect such arbitrariness, ”he detailed. “In Cuba I have everything; I have absolutely nothing in this country. It has never been in my interest to emigrate,” he added.
Southwest, for its part, explained to Omara that the airline received daily notifications of entry to the Island. “It is not like that,” said the activist, “because they receive communications about people who have a problem with their paperwork, with the documentation, and I am perfectly in order”.
“I still don’t understand how someone can decide that I can’t enter my house, that I can’t hug my mother. This is completely absurd, completely arbitrary,” she said.
“This is happening because of the complicity of the United States Government. (…) They are complying with a provision of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, of the Department of Migration. It is completely absurd: a North American company is governed by the Cuban Immigration Department which, furthermore, does not provide any argument: only that I cannot enter, ”he indicated.
In that sense, Omara lamented the alleged involvement of the United States Government in the event.
“What is happening to me today is as much the responsibility of the Cuban dictatorship as it is of the North American government that allows this to happen because I am in American territory, I have all the right in the world to travel to my country and once I arrive to my country they [el régimen] They will violate all the laws they deem pertinent, but it is that [aquí] they are violating US laws,” he concluded.
It is not the first time that the island’s regime prevents the entry of a Cuban resident into national territory using its alleged agreements with US airlines. In February of this year, the Cuban authorities also denied entry to the island to the activist Anamely Ramos.
In that case, the American Airlines airline prevented the activist and art historian from boarding the plane that would take her to Cuba after receiving a message from the regime’s authorities.
“Cuba is violating those rights in my case. Cuba is passing its responsibility to others and those others are accepting that situation. Cuba is creating a problem through me, with the United States because it throws me into an illegal situation that I did not cause,” Ramos denounced on that occasion.
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