CDMX, Mexico- On January 18, Mario Alberto Céspedes Pérez wrote his last post on Facebook: a desperate cry for help for his life. On the banks of a river near Lithuania and with barely a battery, he asked his contacts to locate the Cuban embassy or some organization that could rescue him and his friend, lost in the middle of nowhere.
“Probably if there is not a quick mobilization of some NGO or the Cuban Embassy in belarusThey find us dead on the river bank,” he wrote.
Michael Mendez Vega and Mario Alberto flew from Cuba to Russia with the intention of reaching Spain.
On January 11, they took Belavia Airline flight B2938 from Kazan International Airport to Belarus. There began the nightmare that was foreshadowed by a strange incident: the Belarusian immigration authorities did not put the entry stamp on their passports; as if they had never set foot in the country.
The intention of the two Cubans was to reach Poland, which is part of the European Union, and then continue on to Spain. But the reality was far removed from his wishes. After crossing the first border fence, the guards detected them and hunted with dogs. Mario wrote that “the horror movie” began there.
“They have beaten us, they have thrown away the few things we had.” The next thing was that they were assembled with Syrian immigrants and were not dropped off at the Polish border, as they had been promised; but close to that of Lithuania.
The Cuban narrates that they were abandoned in a jungle where there are wolves and a river that freezes due to low temperatures, and they were given the order to cross it.
“My friend and I decided not to cross and in a chance we managed to escape because we have a return ticket to Russia for the 20th. But after walking kilometers of forest with swamp and going out to a small town called Yakuьovichi Якубычв, we were captured by the guard border. It was again at night, just when I was talking with my wife in Cuba. They beat us, they lit explosives at my feet to scare us.”
Mario and Michael begged to be taken to Minsk to fly to Moscow and from there to Cuba, but the guards ignored their pleas. What they did do was put them in a vehicle and leave them in an even more distant space, also in front of Lithuania. “They told us that if we didn’t cross they were going to kill us,” Mario wrote his post from that last location. He was so scared of freezing to death there, without food or water, that he also wrote a line to say goodbye to his family and ask his wife to take care of his three children.
For almost four days the news about them disappeared. The silence seemed to be the sign that they were not well. However, today, January 22, the Cuban journalist Natasha Vazquez, resident in Russia, confirmed that both are hospitalized due to the cold, but alive. It is unknown what will happen to them.
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