washingtontimes.com By Tom Carter THE WASHINGTON TIMES

     Cuban agents have increased harassment of U.S. diplomats in recent months in a campaign that includes house break-ins, vandalism and crude acts of intimidation, the State Department says in a memo warning U.S. foreign service officers of tough times if they are posted to the island. Top Stories • Iraq ordered to destroy missiles • 'Gutsy' Dean rouses Democrats with call to arms • G-7 looks to the United States to lift world economy • 96 die in nightclub fire • Mugabe 'at home' during French summit • Officials to increase spot inspections • After snow, the deluge

     Similar acts of harassment are being reported by organizers of Project Varela, a recent petition drive calling for free speech and free elections in the single-party communist state, according to news reports from the island.       The memo obtained by The Washington Times lists three pages of "officially sanctioned provocation," including the "leaving of not so subtle messages behind, (including unwelcome calling cards like urine or feces)."      A declassified version of the memo was distributed on Capitol Hill last month.      "Harassment comes in many forms including: Petty theft, unlocking doors and windows, leaving doors and windows open and air conditioners running when USINT personnel are away," according to the memo. The memo describes U.S. diplomats as being subjected to "campaigns of 'sexual advances' ... when their spouses are out of the country."      USINT refers to the U.S. Interests Section, which operates in Havana as an unofficial American Embassy in the absence of formal diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba.      In Washington, the Cuban Interests Section, which serves as Cuba's diplomatic outpost in the United States, declined to comment for this report.      The memo postulates that harassment of American diplomats is being stepped up in proportion to their increased contact with the dissident community, a policy promoted by the Bush administration.      "There has always been some level of harassment, but the Cubans are turning the screws. They are sending a message," said the U.S. official on the condition of anonymity.      The official said many of the 51 U.S. diplomats posted to Cuba have come under increased scrutiny by an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Cuban agents "devoted to the U.S. target."      The Cuban agents seem to be particularly interested in disrupting the lives of U.S. diplomats involved in public diplomacy and outreach.      For example, American diplomats are providing copies of Mark Twain novels, economics 101 textbooks and other educational materials to independent libraries.      "Slowly, but increasingly, the libraries are becoming the center of civil society," the official said.       U.S. officials report the constant calling and hanging up of home telephones and cell phones, the "penetration of houses," breaking into cars and switching radio settings to revolutionary propaganda stations.      According to a former U.S. diplomat, who spent two years in Havana, the family cat of a U.S. economics officer was found with its head bashed in.      U.S. diplomats are required to rent houses provided by the Cuban government. All are alarmed and bugged.      The official said Americans often wake up to an alarm going off and investigate, only to find doors open and muddy footprints on the floor.      One diplomat woke to find his daughter's backpack taken from a room while the television, video recorder and other electronic equipment remained untouched.      "This was not a thief. This was a message. 'We can get in your house, your home. We can get to your child,' " the official said.      On another occasion, a couple had a private discussion in their home about their daughter's susceptibility to mosquito bites.      The next day they returned home to find all their windows open and the house filled with mosquitoes.      In some cases, American diplomats have come home to find someone had urinated on the floor, or defecated "and left it there," the official said.      Excrement is also used by Cubans to harass dissidents.      Last week, more than 100 supporters of Cuban leader Fidel Castro gathered outside the home of Jesus Mustafa Felipe, an activist with Project Varela.      The crowd threw paint and excrement at his house to protest his views, according to wire service reports.      On Tuesday, Mr. Felipe and another Project Varela activist, Robert Montero, were sentenced to 18 months in prison.      The Miami Herald reported that 19 other Project Varela activists were detained Tuesday.      "Threats and acts of aggression and repudiation [directed at Varela activists] have been orchestrated by state security and the Cuban Communist Party," dissident Oswaldo Paya, the leader of Project Varela, said in a statement distributed by the University of Miami's Cuba Transition Project.      The Varela petition drive gathered tens of thousands of signatures urging multiparty democracy and other reforms. The effort has won several prestigious human rights awards. Mr. Paya and the entire project have been nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.      "When the pope visited Cuba, he said, 'Don't be afraid.' The people of Cuba are losing their fear of the regime," said the State Department official. "The Cuban government is trying to reinstitute that fear."

worldnetdaily.com

Posted: February 22, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern Editor's note: Last month marked the 44th year of Fidel Castro's dictatorial rule of Cuba. To discuss this anniversary and prospects for change in Cuba are Agustin Blazquez, a documentarian of Communist Cuba whose recently released "Covering Cuba 3: Elian," which is available through www.CubaCollectibles.com; Enrique Encinosa, a historian and news editor of WAQI radio in Miami, whose books include "Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution"; Servando Gonzalez, author of "The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol" and most recently, "The Nuclear Deception: Nikita Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis"; and Juan Lopez, a political science professor at the University of Illinois and author of the recently released "Democracy Delayed: The Case of Castro's Cuba."

By Myles Kantor

Question: On Jan. 8, 1959, Fidel Castro entered Havana after Fulgencio Batista left Cuba for the Dominican Republic. What's your response to the claim that Castro's occupancy of power 44 years later reflects popular support? Ted Turner, for instance, claimed at the Harvard Law School Forum in March 2001 that "most of the people that are still in Cuba like him."

BLAZQUEZ: What I have learned from sources inside Cuba is that 90 percent of the general population despise the regime. The rest is part of Castro's privileged ruling elite who, for personal economic and security reasons, are afraid of the consequences inherent in the collapse of the regime. His longevity is not a factor of popular support. It is a factor of his highly repressive totalitarian machinery that controls all aspects of life in Cuba. Since the law forbids freedom of speech and association, the democratic opposition forces in Cuba are unable to carry their message to the rest of the population or outside Cuba without incurring significant risk.

Thus there is a generalized lack of confidence that any opposition actions can bring about change. Contributing to the maintenance of the status quo is the lack of support from outside Cuba. The general ignorance of the American public and the rest of the world of the real Cuban situation is due to the rampant misinformation distributed by the left-wing-controlled mainstream news media. It generates insensitivity and a lack of international solidarity for the cause of the liberation of Cuba. Therefore, it is a serious roadblock to freedom.

ENCINOSA: If Castro has so much popular support as Ted Turner claims, why doesn't he allow opposition political parties and free elections? The facts indicate he has no popular support but maintains power based on repression and fear. Over 15,000 Cubans have been executed by firing squads, thousands more have died at sea escaping, tens of thousands have been guests of his concentration camps and almost 2 million – out of 11 million – have escaped to exile.

GONZALEZ: Though it is impossible to know the extent of support for Castro – opinion polls in totalitarian countries are pretty unreliable – I don't think that Cubans in Cuba like Castro. Though it is true that in the very first months of the popular revolution – of which Castro was just one of its many leaders – the majority of the people supported it, as soon as Castro managed to get total control this support began to diminish. Though in the last couple of years the dislike of the Cuban people for Castro is more and more evident, and they express it more openly, for many years they feared repression and disguised their feelings as best as they could. But, in several opportunities, Cubans have expressed their anti-Castro feelings by voting with their feet. This was evidenced when Castro opened the gates in the port of Camarioca in September of 1965 and again during the Mariel boatlift of 1980, when close to 125,000 Cubans precipitously escaped from Castro's proletarian paradise. I am convinced that if tomorrow Castro would open the gates again, in less than six months no less than half of the Cubans would escape from the island.

There is, however, at least one kernel of truth in Turner's words. In 44 years of Castro's tyrannical rule, no major anti-government rebellion has occurred. Save for an initial strong opposition, only a relatively minor incident in the summer of 1994, the so-called Habanazo riots, has been reported. Therefore, even if Cubans don't like Castro, it seems that they don't hate the tyrant enough to risk their lives trying to get rid of him.

Contrary to common belief, liberation from Castro's tyranny is not a difficult thing to accomplish, but is has a high price. To do it, Cubans don't need freedom of association or civil liberties. They don't even need guns. They only need to supply their blood. A spontaneous rebellion would force the Castro regime to bring tanks to Havana's streets and would end in several thousand Cubans massacred by Castro's army. This would destroy the myth of Castro's popularity and inflict a mortal blow to the tyranny. Unfortunately, Cubans obviously value life more than freedom, and they are not willing to pay the ultimate price for it.

In his much-quoted dictum, "Give me liberty or give me death," Patrick Henry expressed it brilliantly. People who value life above freedom sooner or later will become slaves. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case of the Cuban people.

LOPEZ: Under dictatorships, it is not possible to conduct a reliable public opinion survey to determine what percentage of the population supports the dictatorship. However, there are various indirect measures to assess the degree of support for the Castro government among citizens in the island. These proxies suggest that the support for the Cuban government is very low. Whenever the opportunity to leave Cuba has come up, as in 1980 with the Mariel episode and with the rafters in 1994, there have been endless streams of people wanting to get out. Only force has put an end to the migrations. Indicators of social anomie, like high rates of suicide and alcoholism, repeated spontaneous protests (for example, to complain about poor services and breakdowns in the supply of basic necessities), and small-scale strikes (to demand unpaid wages or for other reasons) are further evidence of discontent.

Then there are the facts that the dictatorship does not want free elections, suppresses free speech and freedom of association and is terrified of the possibility that mass protests could develop. Any government that is confident of enjoying majority support does not oppose free elections. Castro is even afraid of holding a referendum, as the Varela Project asks. It should be clear, for those who want to see, that mass mobilizations carried out by totalitarian regimes to orchestrate a facade of public support are just exercises in mass coercion. Many signs also indicate that there is considerable discontent with the regime among members of the Communist Party, the armed forces and other state institutions, for example, defections abroad, widespread corruption and even expressions of criticisms.

As for Ted Turner's comment, the most likely explanation is that he is a conscious supporter of the Castro dictatorship. No wonder some people refer to CNN as Castro's News Network. Evidence shows that CNN news reports are highly biased in favor of the Cuban government. Other possibilities are that Turner is an idiot or one of Castro's uninformed foreign dupes. But I think that the first explanation is more accurate.

...... worldnetdaily.com

newsmax.com

Humberto Fontova Saturday, Feb. 15, 2003 Mayor Ed Koch’s recent article jolted me from my seat. It reminded me that Kurt Waldheim was persona non grata in the U.S. because he’d been a Nazi functionary in the Balkans and either participated in or "had knowledge of" Nazi executions of partisans.

Actually, that’s fine with me. Even before those revelations, Waldheim always struck me as a sleazy liar, an obfuscator and a rat. No wonder he rose so high so fast at the U.N. He was the perfect U.N. secretary-general.

But let me get this straight: "Having knowledge" of atrocities by his co-Nazis against Communist guerrillas 50 years distant put Kurt Waldheim on a Justice Department list of "subversives, terrorists and criminals." He was thus banned from ever treading on American soil.

Interesting, because last November, Victor Dreke (see Dr.Miguel Faria’s article on this murderous swine), a Castro-Communist commander who ordered atrocities against ANTI-Communist guerrillas himself – who executed hundreds of bound and gagged Cuban freedom fighters with his very own Russian pistol, who tortured and murdered U.S. allies as an ally himself of a Soviet Union at that moment installing nuclear missiles (talk about weapons of mass destruction!) 90 miles away and pointing them at the U.S. – this wholesome chap was waved though our portals with a smile!

Indeed he’s welcomed in order to promote a book where he BOASTS about these atrocities, a book that consists of one huge BOAST about a career as a rabid Communist SUBVERTING U.S. policy in Latin America and Africa! This doesn’t put him on the Justice Department list of "subversives"! This doesn’t make him a "criminal"! And this murderous coward does this in the very town where his victims have thousands of surviving family members!

Recall the planned Nazi march in heavily Jewish Skokie, Ill., back in 1977? The stunt was rightly condemned by all decent people (this naturally excludes the ACLU) as a wanton, cruel and utterly needless provocation by a goose-stepping gaggle of losers and bums.

Well, Skokie is about as Jewish as Miami is Cuban.

Imagine Kurt Waldheim writing a book about his Balkan tour and invited to address U.S. college students for a reading of his critically acclaimed "Fear and Loathing in the Balkans! Piling Up Those Partisans!"

Well, that’s the equivalent of what happened at Miami’s Florida International University last November. Yet every pink pundit and farm-state politician claims we Cuban-Americans have the Bush administration in a firm testicular grip.

Then kindly inform Bush’s Justice Department. If this is an example of our overbearing "political influence," I’d hate to see when we don’t have any. Whoops! I take that back. We already saw that, didn’t we? On April 22, 2000, when a motherless little boy was traumatized and enslaved, when the U.S. Constitution was trampled and defamed. Recall that even career pinks like Alan Dershowitz gagged that day.

Dreke was a typical Castro commandante, which is to say a complete oaf. Poor guy, he learned military tactics under Che Guevara. He’d have been better off studying under Sgt Bilko.

Earlier I said he subverted U.S. policy. More accurately: He tried to subvert it. Like his jefe, Che, Dreke blundered magnificently in everything he attempted – except murdering defenseless men.

It took this dolt six years and almost half a million troops, scores of Russian advisers, squadrons of Stalin tanks, flame throwers and a massive "relocation" campaign that shamed anything the British did to the Boers, to finally stamp out a motley (but incredibly valiant and resourceful) band of about 5,000 guerrillas.

These were constantly starved for supplies and finally sold down the river by JFK after the Kennedy-Khrushchev pact.

Please be clear on this, friends, because you sure won’t find it in the asinine movie "Thirteen Days" or in the spurious "Missiles of October" – much less in any Oliver Stone movie: The Missile Crisis ended not when JFK "stood up to the Russians," but when he complied with them – when he agreed to never liberate Cuba with U.S. forces, when he agreed to use U.S. forces to safeguard Castro’s regime, when he agreed to prevent Cubans themselves from attempting to liberate their captive island.

JFK cut off the trickle of aid reaching the anti-Communist fighters in Cuba and stopped Cuban exiles from launching raids against the Communists from the U.S. Thousands of valiant men went from being U.S.-trained freedom fighters to "criminal violators of U.S. neutrality laws" overnight. Forty years later the thing still nauseates, still gags anyone familiar with it.

The American Colonials had France and her immense fleet as allies (more French troops served and died at Yorktown than Colonials). The Viet Cong had Russia and China. The Mujahadeen had the U.S. The Nicaraguan Contras had Reagan in the White House, Otto Reich at state and Ollie North at ...? Well, he was helping from somewhere.

The Cuba freedom fighters had ...?

They had about as much as the Hungarian freedom fighters, as much as the Polish Home Army – no one, nothing. So their fate was the same. This makes their fight all the more glorious. It’s hard to believe what these men (and a few women) did with so little.

Xena, Warrior Princess was a sorry chump compared to one such female guerrilla called La Nina Del Escambray. After her husband, sons and a few nephews were murdered by Florida International University’s recent guest of honor, La Nina grabbed a tommy gun herself, rammed in a clip and took to the hills.

For a year she ran rings around the reds. But the gallant Kennedy-Khrushchev pact finally starved her of supplies and sealed her doom. The reds finally ran her down.

For years La Nina suffered horribly in Castro’s dungeons, but she lives in Miami today. Seems to me her tragic story makes ideal fodder for Oprah, for all those women’s magazines, for all those butch professorettes of "Women’s Studies," for a Susan Sarandon role, for a little whooping up by Gloria Steinem, Dianne Feinstein and Hillary herself.

So, ever heard of La Nina?

Of course not. She was an anti-Castroite, you see. Such heresy will never be forgiven in the Beltway or Hollywood. Instead we got Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan feminist-Marxist (I’m being redundant here, I know) who wrote the book "I, Rigoberta Menchu," an autobiography that chronicles the suffering of her family, and indigenous Guatemalans in general, at the hands of that nation’s U.S.-backed military.

As a result, the rotund Menchu (who resembles a well-tanned version of Bella Abzug) was showered with honorary doctorates from countless colleges, nominated as a U.N. "goodwill ambassador" and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Her book became required reading in practically every college and high school in the land.

Then, whoops! Turned out the book was a massive pile of baloney. This was exposed by the New York Times, of all things. One investigator, seeking to verify the book’s account of Menchu’s young brother dying of malnutrition, instead found the brother. He looked like Ralph Kramden and was wolfing down a huge platter of tortillas when he was found.

But nothing changed for Ms. Menchu, nary an award or honor was rescinded. The Nobel Peace Prize stuck.

So, let’s step back a second and look at this: Menchu – a fraud consummate and studious – a fraud shameless and relentless – a fraud deliberate and unmitigated – gets the Nobel Peace Prize for an utterly bogus account of U.S.-backed oppression and brutality in Latin America. (Yes, there was oppression and brutality – but by the Communist guerrillas that Menchu heralds!)

Anyway, not only does La Nina get nothing, her GENUINE oppressor, Fidel Castro, after 40 years of GENUINE mass murder and mass incarceration, gets nominated, by some Norwegian parliamentarian, for the Nobel Peace Prize himself!

As I’ve said, folks, compared to this stuff, what Alice found through the looking glass makes sense. I give up! I need a brewskie!

But for lack of supplies, half of Cuba’s population might have joined La Nina and her heroic brothers in arms. Take my word for it, folks. We’ll soon have a peek at that man behind the curtain. The whole Castro thing will be exposed as the con job of the century.

He’s been at it a while, too. Herbert Mathews, Ted Turner, Baba Wawa and Dan Rather ain’t the half of it. Many pre-Revolution Cuban "journalists" were every bit as hypocritical, treacherous and stupid.

Take Miguel Angel Quevedo – Cuba’s Ben Bradlee, let’s call him. He published Cuba’s Bohemia magazine, a combination Time-Newsweek, let’s call it. When Castro was slapped in jail for murder in 1953, the magazine wailed to high heaven for the release of this "young idealistic hero."

"President" Batista (hey, he was every bit the "president" Castro is!) – that vicious tyrant, that bloodthirsty fiend, that fascist brute, as branded by that very Bohemia magazine – complied. He set Castro and hundreds of other gangsters, hoodlums and wastrels loose in a general amnesty.

Four years later, when Castro marched into Havana, Quevedo’s magazine featured the young bearded rebel on the cover with the caption "Honor and Glory to the National Hero!"

Ten months after that issue, Bohemia magazine’s entire operation was honorably and gloriously confiscated by the National Hero’s thugs and Quevedo was scrambling into exile for his very life.

His journalists had ranted at Batista as a "tyrant" almost daily for seven years, much like Bradlee’s ranted at Nixon. Now these wiseacres were scrambling too. Some had suggested – very politely and cautiously – that Batista’s replacement wasn’t exactly living up to his promises. For this, the less agile ones had their skulls honorably and gloriously cracked by club-wielding thugs sent by the "National Hero."

Some Venezuelan journalists are learning similar lessons lately at the hands of Chavez’s "Bolivarian Brigades."

Six years after his magazine was confiscated and turned into an outright Communist propaganda organ, Quevedo found himself living in Caracas. One day while contemplating his past, while summing up what he (and thousands of other fellow myopics) had wrought, he put a revolver to his head and blew his brains all over his living room.

Now, if only some U.S. journalists could be as honest with themselves (the ones who claimed a "better life" would come to the Indochinese when we pulled out, for instance).

The point is, the whole Castro Revolution is a ghastly, bloody and nauseating farce. So many eggs broken. Such a putrid omelet resulting.

The Cuban Fuhrer and his minions excel in one thing – and P.T. Barnum could tell you what it is. Health care? WORSENED atrociously since 1958. Literacy? Cuba’s was already among the highest in the hemisphere in 1958. And let’s not even get into economics and human rights. We’ve covered that before.

Castroites as brave guerrilla fighters? As the valiant Davids against the blundering Goliath of the North? Here’s the biggest joke: It took 50,000 of these Davids with jets, Stalin tanks and battery after battery of heavy Soviet artillery to crush the heroes of Giron, who numbered barely 1,200, had only small arms, and were quickly abandoned by their "allies." The wily Castroites suffered casualties of 20 to 1 in their masterful fight.

What little battlefield success the Castroite numbskulls had came not as guerrillas, but AGAINST guerrillas – came in the most brutal, cowardly and disgusting type of anti-insurgency war. Even with odds of 200 to 1 they couldn’t prevail against the heroes of the Escambray rebellion.

You want to read a book that’ll make your blood boil, eyes water, throat lump, and mouth erupt with cheers almost at the same time? Read Enrique Encinosa’s “Cuba En Guerra” (sadly, available only in Spanish).

Enrique does for Cuba’s anti-Communist fighters what Stephen Ambrose did for the GIs. What fighters! What heroism! These guerrillas went to the mat with the red scum. They had the Castroites quaking in their Russian-issue boots. They fought fire with fire. Best of all, for six years (1960-66) they gave the Communist swine a taste of their own medicine.

They’d hang the corpses of Castro soldiers with a sign: "Two Reds dead for every patriot murdered." When captured, they sneered and spit at the reds.

One brave guajiro (Cuban for redneck) had hung a Communist murderer from a guava tree. Shortly, this guajiro was betrayed by an infiltrator, captured and put in a show trial by the Castroites. The Commie "judge" (who was in the same weight division as Charles Rangel) asked if it was true that he’d used a rope to hang a "comrade."

"Damnl right!" the guajiro shot back. "But If I’d gotten my hands on your fat *ss I’d have used a cable!" Minutes later the guajiro faced a firing squad. They asked him if he had any last words. He did:

"I S**T on your Communist Revolution!" he yelled as they took aim. "And I use Fidel’s face to wipe my ....!

Then the bullets ripped into his chest. As I said, some of these freedom fighters live in Miami today. But you’d never know it. And what a shame. The books! The movies! The magazine articles! The CNN and NPR interviews! The History Channel documentaries that could be – if only the Beltway media and Hollywood could pry their lips from Castro’s saliva-slickened heiny for a split second.

(Come on, Andy Garcia ...you out there? Talk to some of your Hollywood chums. Lots of unsung heroes among your compatriots, Andy. Many real-life Rambos and Pvt. Ryans among those Brigadistas and ex-alzados. And many remain as close as any "Band of Brothers," too, Andy.)

The anti-Communist guerrillas gave the Castroites fits. Battered and baffled, the Cuban reds finally went whimpering to their Russian sugar daddies. First thing the Russians did, with a roll of the eyes, was "reassign" Che to another command. This astounding imbecile had bumbled long enough.

After all, the Russians had ample "hands on" experience in extermination campaigns. Recall the Kulaks. Recall the mass slaughter of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian and Polish guerrillas after WWII ...

You don’t recall those? Of course not. ANTI-Communist insurgencies, though a thousand times as protracted and heroic as any by Communists, never get any press.

Jonas Savimbi learned this bitter lesson too. Part of it is practical. Unlike the strutting and loquacious French Resistance (which numbered about 50 million AFTER June 6, 1944, and 5,000 before), most anti-Communist freedom fighters lie in mass graves with a Russian bullet in the neck, while "journalists" and academics toast the cowards, sadists and swine who murdered them.

Humberto Fontova holds an M.A. in history from Tulane University. He's the author of "Helldiver's Rodeo," described as "Highly entertaining!" by Publisher's Weekly, "A must-read!" by Booklist, and "Just what the doctor ordered!" by Ted Nugent.

You may reach Mr. Fontova by e-mail at hfontova@earthlink.net.

Editor's note: "Let Freedom Ring" - Sean Hannity reveals how to triumph over the left

www.boston.com WASHINGTON - The United States yesterday returned a Cuban patrol boat used by four members of the island's coast guard to defect, the US State Department said. Cuba had demanded the United States send back the boat and the crew, who slipped in to the Florida resort town of Key West Friday, docking at a hotel marina and turning themselves in to police. It was not immediately clear whether the men, who had handguns and rifles when they reached Florida, remained in the United States. Under a provision for migrants, Cubans who make it to US soil are usually allowed to stay and are released into the community within days. The boat's return contrasted with the last such incident, when a state-owned plane used by defectors was kept. State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said several federal agencies, including the State Department, Justice Department, and Coast Guard, coordinated yesterday's return. He had no comment on the status of the crew. (Reuters)

www.journalpioneer.com Feb. 7, 2003

by JIM BROWN, Journal Pioneer CHARLOTTETOWN — They left friends and family behind to start a new life in Canada, in the middle of a bitterly cold winter.

They are four Cuban sailors — three men and one woman, who escaped from their vessel, the Southern Ice, when it was docked in Summerside harbour for nearly three weeks in January.

Joe Byrne, youth co-ordinator for the Diocese of Charlottetown and member of the Association for Newcomers, says the four defectors, who travelled to Charlottetown in bitterly cold weather, are hunkering down for a potentially long wait before getting official refugee status.

Four Sri Lankans, who came into Canada last October and made their way to Charlottetown, have yet to earn their status.

Byrne isn't sure whether they are still in Charlottetown.

In the meantime the four Cubans are busy searching for lawyers to represent them and help them with their applications to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB).

"They need four lawyers", one for each person, said Byrne.

They are currently receiving emergency social assistance while they await word on their claims.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this (application and hearing) took five to six, or perhaps eight months," for a decision to be reached, said Byrne.

At least two of the defectors have left spouses and children behind, and are desperately seeking ways to bring them to Canada.

They are reluctant to talk about their experiences for fear of reprisals against family and friends in Cuba, said Bryne.

But at least they have the support of many Charlottetown residents, who generously donated food and winter clothing, he said.

Earlier published accounts reported conditions aboard the Southern Ice had steadily deteriorated and that there complaints about long hours of work and problems with pay.

Nancy Cairns, agent for the Southern Ice, says her third contract definitely wasn't the charm. Cairns, who lives in Stanley Bridge, took over the business from her husband, Harold, who passed away recently.

"I'm definitely learning the hard way. It's been very interesting."

The Southern Ice, which was berthed in Summerside for 19 days in January loading 5,450 tonnes of tablestock potatoes destined for Venezuela, was stuck in harbour for much longer than planned because of foul winter weather, including high winds.

Cairns was responsible for nearly everything the crew needed while the boat was docked, including arranging, if necessary, medical and dental visits, food supplies and legal services.

"It was my third ship, thank goodness it wasn't my first," she joked. Her husband had warned her that defecting crew members weren't that uncommon in the business, but it still came as a shock when it happened to her.

"There's absolutely nothing you can do" when it happens, she said.

Fortunately, other members of the crew could fill in for the missing sailors and the ship was able to continue to its destination when the weather improved. The ship was expected to pick up more crew members in Venezuela.

"I don't think it had anything to do with the conditions on the ship," said Cairns, who visited the ship nearly every day when it was berthed.

"The ship was always clean," she said.