SEND ELIAN HOME!
Elian Gonzalez is the little Cuban boy who was abducted and shipwrecked in international waters and is now detained in Florida with distant relatives who do not want him to return to his family and friends in Cuba.
Simple justice (and 62% of the American people in the latest opinion polls) demands that the U.S. government send 6-year-old Elian home immediately! This traumatized child, who saw his mother drown, has been held in the U.S. for over two months. He should have been returned to his loving father, grandparents and extended family in Cuba within a few days after his rescue.
`Now, in defiance of Justice Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service rulings that the child belongs with his family, fanatical anti-government Cubans in Miami —backed by some right-wing U.S. politicians still fighting the Cold War a decade after the USSR collapsed—are seeking to delay the child’s return indefinitely. The reason Elian is being kept in Florida is that there are people in our country who care more about using this lost boy as a political football than in upholding national and international law by restoring him to his family.
This is a matter of human rights, family rights and child rights—not the settling of old political scores, or pandering for election votes, at the expense of an innocent, unfortunate child.
Each day this confused boy is held in Florida he is subjected to continual adult pressure to renounce his family and his homeland. This is not love. It is Cold War politics generated by the same malevolence that insists on continuing our country’s 40-year-old embargo against Cuba. Trips to Disneyland, expensive gifts, endless new toys, media attention, crass flattery and other forms of manipulation and bribery are only harming this poor child and causing great anguish to his family in Cuba. It’s long past time: No more politics, no more excuses, no more smug hypocrisy—return Elian to his family now!
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@iacenter.org
http://www.iacenter.org
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
