Cuba: Hungary a US lackey

Earlier in the week, Hungarian foreign ministry state secretary Márta Fekszi Horváth told reporters after a visit with 29 Cuban nationals currently living on the American naval base in Guantánamo that the country would be granting asylum to the dissidents, some of whom were on a hunger strike in protest of their living conditions. The US government will reportedly be covering the cost of rent, clothing and languages course for one year.

One may ask why the US government simply doesn’t move them somewhere in America, but the Cuban Foreign Ministry opines that those on the Guantánamo base would, for financial or social reasons, would not be able to get an American visa.

At the time of Horváth’s announcement, the state news agency MTI reported her as stating that the issue had been discussed during talks between George W. Bush and prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány on the occasion of Bush’s visit to the European country last year.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry’s complaint goes on to note that “the government of the United States flagrantly violates, once again, the migratory accords signed with Cuba on May 2, 1995, which state that ‘Cuban emigrants intercepted at sea and those who illegally enter the US Naval Base in Guantánamo, will be sent back to Cuba.’” The ministry also cited the Coaling and Naval Stations Agreement between the two nations signed in 1903; then “the United States literally committed to do ‘everything possible to use those places exclusively as coal and naval bases.’”

Reads the statement: “With this irresponsible decision, the Empire encourages illegal migration from Cuba while it hypocritically expresses its concern about it. While it organizes exercises to face a supposed massive exodus, it fails to comply with its obligations and does not send back to Cuba 16 out of every 100 illegal emigrants intercepted at sea … while the US government builds a center for illegal emigrants in the base, it maintains the Cuban Adjustment Act and the so-called wet-foot dry-foot policy, thus encouraging illegal migration.”

As for Hungary, the Cuban declaration accuses Horváth of “meet[ing] in Miami with the anti-Cuba mafia there, where she spoke with the former henchmen of Batista’s dictatorship and other terrorists about her experience for a ‘democratic transition’ in Cuba” in 2006.

“The Hungarian government is acting as an accomplice of the Empire,” read the declaration, It is collecting points, awaiting its prize. It is insisting, servilely, on demonstrating to the powerful and aggressive master that it can count on its abject fidelity.”

As for the would-be emigrants themselves, a spokesman for the Hungarian foreign ministry stated their move to Hungary “could be this year or even next year.”