Florida Agenda

HAVANA, CUBA – The issuance of a State Department visa to Cuban official Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and niece of his brother, Fidel, has been met by a firestorm of protest from LGBT Cuban-Americans, who condemned the Cuban regime’s record of human rights violations.

Herb Sosa, the executive director of the Unity Coalition, told reporters, “For Mariela Castro, or anybody else under the Castro dictatorship, to say they are representing the rights of anyone is an insult to the hundreds of thousands who have either been killed, jailed or assassinated by their own hands, or the nearly 100,000 people who’ve jumped into the ocean looking for freedom who haven’t made it here.” On Tuesday, Castro, the director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education, told an audience of about 130 in New York that her support for LGBT rights in Cuba “is a pretext to fight other forms of discrimination.”

The visit by Castro—who was issued visas in 2001 and 2002 by the Bush Administration—was denounced by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who chairs the Democratic National Committee, and Florida U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL).

“Allowing Raul’s daughter to come to the U.S. when the regime still holds Alan Gross makes no sense,” Nelson said, referring to the American social worker arrested in 2009 by Cuban authorities for providing satellite phones and computers to Cuban Jews, in violation of the island nation’s laws. Gross is currently serving a 15-year sentence in a Cuban prison.

Australia – A same-sex couple from Bangladesh who had their protection visa application refused by the Australian immigration department, have launched a legal challenge through the High Court to appeal the decision, describing it as a “miscarriage of justice”.

The men’s application was made based on a claim that they were at risk of torture and death threats in Bangladesh due to their homosexuality. They claim the reason for refusal was based partly on an anonymous faxed letter claiming they were not a legitimate couple. The men say this is likely to have been written by their former Australian immigration agent with whom they were in dispute over fees.

Escalation to the High Court follows an appeal at a tribunal in which the Immigration Minister’s original decision to refuse protection was upheld, based partly on the letter which claimed one of the men had a girlfriend and that his claim to be gay was “totally bogus”.

Speaking in 2009, tribunal member Giles Short said he “would not ordinarily place much weight on a message from an anonymous informant, but I consider it significant that the person … was clearly close enough to the applicant to know his passport number and the nature of the claims he had made in support of his application for a protection visa”.

The High Court’s decision is believed to be likely to influence standards for evidence and procedure in future Refugee Review Tribunal hearings.