This partial breaking of the hunger strike comes as a great relief to me and to Mr Garcia’s relatives and friends, since there was a very real danger that any further continuance of the hunger strike would have resulted in irreparable damage to Mr Garcia’s health. – David Comissiong, human rights activist/lawyer, while announcing on Tuesday that “concrete” steps were being taken to have Cuban Raul T. Garcia “transferred to a non-punitive facility”.WELL, THE?VOCAL?David Comissiong did not quite get his wish to have convicted drug runner Raul Garcia released onto the streets of Barbados.
But he surely will get him out of the confines of Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds.
That is, if Mr Comissiong’s announcement on Tuesday is understood by all sides as it was given to the Press.
If nothing more, the spirit of humanity within will gladden us all that Mr Garcia has set aside the hunger strike he began on January 17 – if only temporarily.
For Mr Garcia has made it clear that the suspension of his hunger strike is to give the Government time to pursue options to either relocate him or eventually find a country willing to accept him as a resident.
The man who has remained without food for nearly a month in protest would as easily go back on strike if in his view the Government is tardy with its reportedly declared intent, because he will not be waiting on it forever.
Clearly, the Government’s quite awkward position has not changed and it needs more than ever now to tread cautiously, for it has given a commitment to Mr Garcia, if we will go by Mr Comissiong’s word.
Even more so now that the eyes of the world are affixed upon us, Barbados will not want to offend the United States, pull away its sympathetic shoulder from Cuba, or sully its global standing on human rights issues.
Nor will the Government be unmindful of the majority view of its citizenry: that they would rather have Mr Garcia elsewhere other than in Barbados.
And it is not so much that their position is uncharitable as it is uncomfortable with a situation that is most unfamiliar to them, and for which there has been no nationally managed precedent.
Mr Garcia, who was also being sought by United States authorities to answer several charges, was arrested in Barbados for cocaine trafficking, but having served his 15-year jail term at Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds, now has nowhere to go.
Still two questions haunt us: why not a forgiving Cuba, where Mr Garcia was born? Why not a compromising United States where he was raised?
We remain sympathetic towards Mr Garcia’s freedom after 17 years in jail, but can’t help but feel hard done having Mr Garcia’s fate in our face.
