Castro's propaganda secceeds
By Klaus Brill
WASHINGTON (DPA): Is a six-year-old child capable of requesting political asylum in a foreign country? Obviously not, is the only sane answer. So it will soon be up to the appropriate U.S. district court to decide whether the refugee child Elian Gonzalez should be allowed to return to Cuba with his father. However, to judge by the public statements of the court, the comments of Republican politicians and especially the behavior of Miami's exiled Cuban population, it would appear that commonsense has little say in what is becoming an increasingly emotive debate.
It was not a moment too soon when Attorney-General Janet Reno chose to use the force of an armed police raid to remove Elian from the stressful environment of his great-uncle's home in Miami and deliver him into the care of his father. In fact, she should have acted earlier to prevent the extremists of the exiled Cuban community and the Castro regime blowing up the issue into a huge propaganda war, which, as things stand at the moment, looks like being decided in favor of Fidel Castro.
No true democrat could possibly be pleased about that. Fidel Castro is a tyrant who throws his opponents into gaol. His people have suffered for decades under his incompetent and stubborn leadership. Perhaps he would long ago have been dethroned like Erich Honecker & Co. in East Germany had the eight U.S. presidents since 1959 and the majority of Congress in Washington not persevered so relentlessly with their boycott of their small neighboring state.
This policy once drove Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union and to this day provides him with a convincing argument with which to paper over the cracks of his failure in the eyes of the Cuban people. The historical events of 1989 in Europe raise the question whether a rapprochement may not have posed Castro more of a threat.
The case of Elian Gonzalez was tailor-made for Castro because it is so cut and dried -- all over the world a child belongs with his father, irrespective of political systems. The fact that this father happens to live under a repressive Communist regime is neither here nor there.
For this reason, it was a mistake on the part of the exiled Cubans in Florida to think they could manipulate the situation to embarrass their archenemy in Havana. And Elian's family in Miami adopted an odd approach by attempting to increase the pressure on their troubled relatives in Cuba, in particular on Elian's father, with a series of spectacular appearances in the press instead of seeking a compromise in private.
That Castro reacted to the police raid in Miami by calling a day-long cease-fire in the Cold War with the United States is of little significance. There are few signs that this reconciliation will last.
The affair may yet have a positive outcome. Congressmen in Washington and Miami-based Cubans may come to the conclusion that, after 41 years of Cuban Communism, mindless confrontation is not the most effective means of tackling the Castro regime.