| Baseball Players' Risk Lives Defecting. 3/9/06 |
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Cuban baseball players pay with their lives for defecting
A lively debate surrounds the Cuban team’s presence –should the team representing the Cuban dictatorship participate in events held in free countries as counterparts of professional teams that play by the rules of open societies? For the discussion to be enlightened, a few rarely mentioned facts should be taken into account. Scores of Cuban athletes have risked their lives trying to flee the island, some at sea in makeshift rafts, most risking prison or death when defecting overseas. In fact, on July 18, 1978, Cuban baseball star Pedro José Rodríguez was assassinated by Cuban State Security agents during the Central American and Caribbean Games in Medellín, Colombia. Rodríguez was thrown from the 5th floor window of his hotel room for attempting to defect. Repression of athletes is codified in Cuban laws that make them pawns of the Communist state. Servitude begins in childhood. Article 90 of Cuba’s Code of Childhood and Youth (Law No. 16 of June 28, 1978) dictates: “The promotion of athletes to higher categories takes into account not only their athletic achievements, but also their social and political attitude.” To make sure they continue delivering, all athletes selected to play abroad are held to Article 216 of Cuba’s Penal Code, penalizing with up to three years in prison any attempt to leave the country without prior government approval. If nothing more can be expected at the First World Baseball Classic for the repressed people of Cuba -or the athletes among them- a symbolic gesture would not hurt. A moment of silence for Pedro José Rodríguez and the thousands more victims of the Castro regime could hardly spoil the fun. For more on the victims of the Castro regime, see www.CubaArchive.org. Cuba Archive: A Truth Recovery Project, is documenting the cost in lives of the Cuban Revolution.
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