Cuba announces restrictions on return visits by illegal emigrants

CNN
September 1, 1999

                  Cuba announces restrictions on return visits by illegal emigrants

                  MIAMI (AP) -- The Cuban government says any Cuban who left the island
                  illegally after Sept. 9, 1994, will not be allowed to return, a newspaper
                  reported.

                  Luis Fernandez, a spokesman with the Cuban Interests Section in
                  Washington, said the intent was to strongly discourage illegal migration, The
                  Miami Herald reported in Wednesday's editions.

                  The ban ends Havana's 1993 policy of allowing those who left illegally to
                  return after they have spent at least five years abroad. An Aug. 26 notice
                  from the Cuban Interests Section to the six U.S. travel agents who handle
                  trips to Cuba said the new policy had been adopted for an "indefinite
                  period," according to the newspaper.

                  U.S. officials said the new ban shows Cuba's communist government wants
                  to uphold its end of a Sept. 9, 1994, emigration pact with Washington,
                  which sought to discourage risky, illegal emigration by boat and raft by
                  expanding legal departures.

                  But a U.S. State Department official told the Herald that indefinitely
                  prohibiting citizens from returning to their country would be a violation of
                  human rights.

                  The announcement came a week after the public trial in Cuba of three
                  accused people-smugglers, two of them Florida residents, on charges for
                  which they could be sentenced to life in prison. A decision in the case is
                  pending.

The defendants are among the 40 U.S.-based alleged people-smugglers
Cuba claims to have captured in recent years.

                  Some 110,000 Cubans living in the United States visit the island each year,
                  mostly flying to Havana from Miami, but many also travel via third countries
                  such as Mexico and the Bahamas, the newspaper reported.