Bahamas boycott urged after journalist is beaten at jail

BY OSCAR CORRAL

Video of a Miami television reporter attacked by a guard outside a notorious Bahamian immigration jail is snowballing into a political crisis for the island government, as Cuban exile groups called Wednesday for a tourism boycott.

Univisión reporter Mario Vallejo said he received seven stitches just above his eyebrow Tuesday night after a jail guard slammed his head against a car bumper, knocking him unconscious for about two minutes. Among the witnesses was a Telemundo 51 reporter and Cubans who traveled from Miami to visit relatives kept at the immigration detention center.

Vallejo was in the Bahamas to report on eight Cuban migrants found on the tiny, uninhabited Elbow Cay last week by the Coast Guard -- survivors in a group in which six others perished at sea and one man was taken to a Florida Keys hospital for treatment. The Coast Guard turned over the seven migrants to Bahamian authorities Sunday because Elbow Cay is Bahamian territory.

''I was just doing my job as a reporter,'' Vallejo said Wednesday. ``At that moment, I was outside the limits of the jail and my cameraman was hidden in a taxi.''

The Bahamian consul in Miami, Alma A. Adams, said the government had launched an investigation into the incident, in which at least two other journalists were detained by jail guards.

''I'm informed that the reports that have appeared in the media are not correct, and there is being prepared an update to be relayed by the Bahamian government to present the facts of exactly what transpired,'' Adams told The Miami Herald, adding she met with representatives of concerned Cuban exile groups.

SECURITY

In a written statement, Adams added that the Bahamian Ministry of Labour and Immigration ``has taken great pains to ensure the smooth operation of the detention center as a matter of national security. The officers responsible for maintaining order at the center are trained to act within the law while ensuring the necessary high level of security.''

Last year, The Miami Herald reported that Cuban, Haitian and Jamaican detainees claimed to be regularly beaten while handcuffed, subjected to extortion and denied clean water and medical treatment. The situation reached a flash point in late 2004, when a showdown between Cuban migrants and soldiers, who guard the camp, ended with the detainees being sprayed with rubber bullets and a barracks burned down.

Others outside the Carmichael Detention Centre on Tuesday included Alberto Tavares, a reporter for Channel 51, and family members of other Cuban migrants.

According to Vallejo and two witnesses -- Zenaida Torres and Luz Karime Galvez -- family members and reporters had just finished visiting the Cuban prisoners and had left the jail grounds, where cameras are forbidden.

Vallejo then saw authorities detain Telemundo cameraman Lázaro Abreu for taping.

Vallejo said he yelled to Abreu: ``Don't worry, I'll call your station and let them know.''

He picked up a nearby pay phone and called his boss to relay news of Abreu's detention to Vallejo's competitors at Channel 51.

BLACKED OUT

''At that moment, an official named Smith hangs up the phone, and starts pulling me toward the jail,'' Vallejo said. ``If he got me in there, I'd be done for, so I pulled back. Then he threw me to the ground, and grabbed my head and slammed it on the bumper of a car.''

Vallejo blacked out for about two minutes, witnesses said.

''They grabbed Mario Vallejo and threw him to the ground and kicked him,'' Torres said. ``He fell on the ground, and he was unconscious. They didn't want to call the rescue. I had to scream and get tough. That man was holding [Vallejo] down with his big boot, stepping on him.''

Karime and Telemundo reporter Alberto Tavares began to film the bloodied Vallejo with a home video camera. Guards immediately rushed them, demanding the camera, said Tavares and Karime, who was carrying her 1-year-old son at the time.

''My boy fell to the floor and started crying, but the guard didn't care,'' Karime said.. . . I paid a passing car to take me away because they were going to detain me with my child.''

`EVERYONE SAW IT'

Tavares said he also witnessed the guard beating Vallejo. Vallejo's cameraman, Osvaldo Duarte, who filmed the episode from inside a taxi, was detained, but left his equipment in the taxi. Vallejo said he recovered his equipment later that night after being released.

''Everyone there saw it,'' Tavares said. ``I saw him hit the ground, and he tried to get up, but the guard squashed him. What happened to Mario was very, very violent.''

An ambulance finally came for Vallejo and rushed him to the airport, where he caught the first available flight to Miami. He was treated at a Kendall hospital, he said.

Vallejo, Torres and Karime said that Cubans in the detention center told them that the previous night, a jail guard dragged one of the Cubans into the courtyard and beat him in front of the others to send a warning.

In 2003, Amnesty International issued a scathing report on treatment of migrants and refugees at the detention center.

On Wednesday, several Cuban exile groups, including Democracy Movement, Agenda Cuba and the Cuban Liberty Council, called for a temporary boycott of all tourism to the Bahamas.

''We're calling on the Bahamas to stop the abuse of prisoners,'' said Democracy Movement President Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who led a 30-person protest in front of the Bahamian consul's downtown office in Miami Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen slammed the Bahamian government: ``I have met in several occasions with Bahamian authorities and they have always been unrelenting and unwavering in their unwillingness to remedy these abuses in any way. . . . Different year, same problems.''