The Garcia saga has taken over from the Alexandra soap opera. A convicted Cuban cocaine trafficker has served his time in jail but neither his country of origin nor his adopted countries nor any other on earth wants him. And, believe it or not, some consider this a major human rights problem for Barbados!
Some misguided souls say he should be given citizenship, a privilege denied to many honest, hard-working foreigners here.
Mr Garcia, as an ex-drug rehab officer has pointed out, has not been a nice person. He deceived Barbados as to his identity. To my best knowledge, he hasn’t revealed for whom he was bringing the drugs. And with threats of starving himself, he tries to pressure the country that fed and cared for him for two decades.
A Brass Tacks caller hit the nail on the head. A breadfruit can only come from a breadfruit tree; an apple from an apple tree. The term “stateless” cannot apply to Garcia, as our Prime Minister pointed out, because he has been convicted of a serious criminal offence.
Garcia was bred and born in Cuba. To Cuba he belongs. And any Cuban law which takes away citizenship on the whims and fancies of a government can have no moral validity.
Barbados cannot pass a law to prevent Bajan-born criminals from being deported back here. Jamaica cannot pass a law saying that it is not taking back Jamaicans now serving time in our prisons. What gives Cuba that right?
Nothing! It’s just that Barbados is a small country and Cuba is a big bully.
They should be especially ashamed. Barbados erected a monument to the Cuban airline bombing disaster victims. Dame Billy Miller at the United Nations berated the mighty United States for shielding the criminals responsible. God only knows how we have suffered for that.
Yet now we ask them to take back their own citizen, they kick us in the teeth and leave us to face human rights condemnation. Shame!
We can’t fight them physically. But let’s affix an addendum to that Payne’s Bay memorial: “Let this monument also bear witness that in 2012 Cuba, whom Barbados unstintingly supported against United States strictures, stabbed us in the back in the matter of their citizen Raul Garcia. A friend does not dump his garbage in your front yard and leave it there. Cuba has shown that she is no true friend to Barbados.”
Let every visitor read it. Let it fly on the Internet. Let us identify the real culprit here.
The issue is freedom. As a protestor in Egypt recently pointed out, there is no “absolute” freedom. Your freedom ends where mine begins.
So too with freedom in other spheres. Our Constitution enjoins that “no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom” of religion. If a prominent person repeatedly ridicules my religion on a public forum and sneeringly scoffs at The Bible, is that person not hindering the enjoyment of my religious freedom? Especially when he would never make similar derogatory comments about the Islamic faith?
Similarly the freedom to enjoy privacy is being destroyed by the Internet and Papa Ratses. Al Gilkes should have had every right to cool off naked on his balcony as he desired, provided he did not exhort his conciliator to eminence in view of his neighbours.
Al denied himself that pleasure for fear his manhood might find itself displayed on lustful laptops worldwide. I wasn’t so wise.
Two years ago I allowed a foreign female photographer to take pictures of me for a specific magazine article. I never saw them or heard from her again.
Lo and behold, last Monday I got word that the same lady had got into trouble for selling pictures of people without signed releases. And there on the Net are 12 pictures of me, looking rancid, copyrighted in her name, fondling a female goat named Sweet Pea in various positions. Photos 108 to 119. All for sale at over US$400 each!
The site is http://seubertstock.photoshelter.com/gallery/Barbados/G0000lUce5FUWAHk/2/1
Was my freedom infringed? I don’t know. But just imagine, if a picture of a Lowdown Dick can fetch over BDS$800, how much they would charge for an Al Gilkes in pole position!
As I said last week, there’s mucho money in this celebrity thing.
• Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator.
