“They have warned us that we cannot return to Cuba,” he told 14ymedio Héctor Manuel Meizoso González, the uncle of Elizabeth, the girl who died last October in the sinking of a boat after being hit by a Border Guard vessel in Bahía Honda, Artemisa. The man, who managed to leave Cuba with his sister a month ago, details his fears to this newspaper.
This Wednesday, from the police unit known as the Cuatro Caminos Technician, in Guanajay, the family that remains in Cuba received a phone call making it clear that they should not return to the island. Meizoso González, 21, fears that the situation for relatives left behind may worsen after their departure.
Little Elizabeth’s grandmother “could not travel,” the young man underlines and confirms that the minor’s mother, Diana Meizoso, arrived in Miami a month ago by air parole humanitarian, a path established since January of this year to guarantee safe migration between Cuba and the United States.
This Wednesday, from the police unit known as the Cuatro Caminos Technician, in Guanajay, the family that remains in Cuba received a phone call making it clear that they should not return to the island.
After arriving in Miami, the minor’s uncle has once again rejected the version of the Ministry of the Interior, which designated the case of Bahía Honda as “human trafficking”. At the time, an official note assured that “there were no invasive or aggressive actions” and argued that the crash was inevitable because the boat “had gotten in the way” of the Border Guards.
In an interview for the Univisión chain, the migrant denied the official version. “That was not how they took out the video in Cuba.” He reiterated that on October 28, the Cuban Border Guard rammed the boat in which 28 people were trying to leave the island, including six of their relatives, causing the death of Elizabeth, Yerandy García Meizoso, Aimara Meizoso, Israel Gómez, Indira Serrano Cala, Nathali Acosta Lemus and Omar Reyes Valdes.
The most recent statement by Diana Meizoso’s brother coincides with the one he gave to 14ymedio in November of last year: “That was not an accident, that was murder, because it was done on purpose,” he said then. The intention of the Border Guards was to sink the speedboat.
In the interview broadcast this week through social networks, Meizoso González explained that the boat had left behind the griffinbut when they “stopped they felt the boat move” and that was when the Border Guards boat fell on top of them.
The young man, who is still affected by the accident, also mentioned that when he went to legal medicine to obtain the document on the causes of death of his niece, Elizabeth, they denied it. “A friend who works there told me that she did not die from drowning, she died from the blows she gave herself.”
The young man, who is still affected by the accident, also mentioned that when he went to legal medicine to obtain the document on the causes of death of his niece, Elizabeth, they denied it.
Diana Meizoso, who was arrested last November by State Security and taken to its headquarters in Villa Marista, Havana, so that he could change his statement. He refused to do it, Hector stressed.
The Cuban interviewed by the Univisión network said that there was pressure for several of the survivors to change their statement. “My brother (Héctor Eduardo Meizoso Chiong, who was traveling with his wife, sister and a cousin) was beaten, that’s why they put his coat on him,” with which he appears in the video released by the Cuban authorities, in which he said ” things that were not true, we were not clear about what had happened, we said that it was a murder and it was not like that”.
While, Luis Manuel Borges Alvarez, the boatman who also survived the sinking of the boat in Bahía Honda, is in jail, awaiting trial. This Cuban who went into exile in 2015, in a statement issued by the authorities like the ones they usually make to discredit dissidents, and which was broadcast on official television, blamed Héctor Meizoso Fabelo, the young men’s uncle, as the main organizer of the attempt to leave the country.
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