The Cuban Carlos Jiménez and Daria, his wife of Russian nationality, have an appointment for May 18 at the office of the UN Refugee Agency (Acnur) in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, to request asylum. Both left Cuba on Tuesday amid pressure and threats from the immigration authorities.
“Now we have to see how we survive,” he tells 14ymedio Jimenez. “In any case, we keep going because one cannot give up.” However, he warns that “they still won’t leave us alone. I received a message last night from a friend asking me not to do anything else and to shut up. It seems they pressured him.”
Jiménez details to this newspaper that “until the 25th of this month we have a place to live. Then we’ll see what to do. I’m sure something will be resolved. If we manage to get out of Cuba having pissed off a lot of people, everything is possible.”
The young man recounts that when they left the island, through terminal 3 of the José Martí International Airport, they were made to wait for long minutes at immigration control, but they finally managed to board the flight without any major setbacks.
With their departure from the country, the couple put an end to a nightmare that started last january, when they arrived escaping from the recruitment of the Cuban as a soldier for the war in Ukraine. Until then, they both lived in Kushelevskaya Doroga, St. Petersburg.
“Later we will see what to do. I am sure that something will be resolved. If we manage to leave Cuba having pissed off a lot of people, everything is possible”
The couple then decided to fly to Cuba, where the young man maintains his official residence in his parents’ house. He knew that coexistence would be difficult due to ideological divergences, but he had no other option. As the days went by, the family political contradictions became untenable.
“On the morning of March 8, a uniformed man entered our room accompanied by my father. This time they did not knock on the door. It was an Immigration officer. He said that my wife had been in the country longer than what is regulated for foreigners, but that was false because we had only been there for 55 days and the established is 90 days. He acted strange and aggressive,” Carlos told this newspaper at the time.
The uniformed man could not specify the objectives of his visit and changed his version saying that there were noise complaints, but without clarifying where the complaint came from. He finally left an appointment for the other day at the Immigration offices of the municipality of Habana del Este, where they explained that the problem was that Daria was not financially solvent, which was also false, according to her husband’s complaint.
The first thing that occurred to Daria was to contact the Russian Consulate in Havana to ask for help. “I called the Consulate’s phone number and explained my situation, then a man gave me another number to speak to the consul on duty. When seconds later I dialed that number, the same voice came on the phone and, without hiding his laughter, let me know that they did not help the traitors there,” she told this newspaper.
The pressure on the couple was increasing in tone and both decided to leave the Island for another country where they could request asylum. With few resources and visa limitations, the option that finally came to fruition was that of Trinidad and Tobago, where they hope to find the protection that they were unable to receive in Cuba.
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