Refugee Haven At Naval Base
When thousands of Cuban boat people were taken to the Guantanamo naval base in eastern Cuba five years ago by the U.S. Coast Guard, the sense of despair among some was such that officials feared a violent uprising.
Officials discussed similar concerns this week as they debated whether Guantanamo was an appropriate temporary safe haven for 20,000 Kosovar Albanian refugees. In the end, Guantanamo was deemed acceptable because, officials said, they don't expect the stay to be very long.
The refugees should begin arriving before the end of the week under rules that will permit a stay of up to 18 months. But officials envision a much shorter actual time frame.
Â"We hope to have them back in six months,Â" says Brian Atwood, the Clinton administration's foreign aid chief and coordinator for the humanitarian response to the Kosovo crisis.
The 20,000 are part of an estimated 120,000 ethnic Albanian refugees who will be granted temporary asylum in a variety of countries, mostly European.
The administration has been at pains recently to emphasize the temporary nature of the asylum. It also stresses that it isn't aiding Yugoslavia's forced expulsion campaign against Kosovar Albanians but is recognizing the humanitarian realities the refugees face.
This has been a hectic decade for Guantanamo. First, Haitian boat people were sent there, and later, disaffected Cubans.
In 1994, the Clinton administration warned Cubans fleeing economic desperation that their hopes of reaching U.S. shores were futile.
If captured by U.S. Coast Guard vessels, the boat people were warned, they would be transferred to the Guantanamo base with no hope of resettlement in the United States.
At the time, officials did not take into account the rage of many of the 24,000 or so boat people condemned to Guantanamo's hot, dusty confines. They had fled Cuba expecting to be welcomed into South Florida's Cuban community, only to wind up at Guantanamo.
In desperation, some refugees there drank gasoline or drove stakes into their limbs — all in the hope that emergency medical evacuation to South Florida would be their ticket to freedom.
The Clinton administration reassessed its policy after U.S. military officials on the island decided that the desperation level was such that a violent explosion was possible, particularly when summer temperatures exceeded the 100-degree mark.
In May 1995, the United States announced that all Cubans in Guantanamo would be free to resettle in the United States as part of a broader deal with the Cuban government.
The 20,000 refugees who will be sent to Guantanamo will not be eligible to apply for asylum or any other benefit because Guantanamo is a military base, not U.S. territory. They are being given temporary refuge, and the goal is to return them to their homeland, Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Dan Kane said.
Some analysts believe the Kosovar Albanians won't have to worry about being sent bacto the Balkans.
Â"There is nothing as permanent as a temporary refugee,Â" said Mark Krikorian, who heads an anti-immigration think tank. Â"These people are not going home.Â"
By George Gedda