Toronto, March 21, 2012

To: Mr. Raúl Castro Ruz, President of the Council of State and Ministers.

From: Dr. Rafael González Pupo, a Cuban citizen residing abroad.

Subject: Circumstances for entering the country on humanitarian grounds.

I am Dr. Rafael A. Pupo González, and I graduated with honors and as a student of exceptional academic performance in 1994, specializing in general and cardiovascular surgery. I served in that capacity at the Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras from 1999 to 2007. That year, I came to Canada for cardiac surgery training, fully funded by the University of Toronto, and in 2009, at the end of the course, decided not to return to Cuba. My reason? Economic emigration, like so many hundreds of thousands of Cubans who now number 1.5 million living in exile. Exile was once the worst punishment for Cuban emigrants, or those expatriated for political reasons, and today has become the greatest desire of our best citizens…. who are asphyxiated and disillusioned.

I had a salary equivalent to 20 CUC in Cuba, and that was not sufficient to support our family and my 90 year-old parents, whose only income was 100 pesos a month, and this situation became untenable to me.

According to the obsolete, rigid, inhuman and anti-constitutional immigration laws in force, you have denied passport-authorization for me to visit Cuba, my country, the country that belongs to all Cubans and not the private island of the caste in power.

Faced with this refusal, His Excellency, Mr. Raúl Delgado Concepción, Consul of the Republic of Cuba in Toronto, explained to me that my family could initiate proceedings for an entry permit on humanitarian grounds, which is negotiated in cases of serious illness or the death of a close family member.

My mother died a year ago, and my elderly father is now 94 and very sick. He has prostate neoplasia, ischemic heart disease, aneurysm of the Valsalva sinus, bilateral glaucoma, with loss of vision in one eye and, of course, severe depressive anxiety, because he wishes to see me, his son, before he dies. In accordance with your immigration regulations, my family initiated those efforts in June of 2011.

For nine months they applied in the city of Holguín, where they presented their documents, and at the National Immmigration Department, and they were told that our request had been sent to a higher level for evaluation, and they were even told to be very patient, because the negotiations could take a year. Logically, we answered that, in that time, a sick person might die, and they replied that, in that instance, we would have to provide them with the death certificate. We ask ourselves if those procedures have such an implicit long delay with the purpose of prolonging our suffering. What objective do undertaking these applications have, created by the same official body that creates false expectations, if, at the end, nothing gets resolved? What humanitarian value do they have?

Today, March 21st, 2012, my family visited the National Immigration Department and they were informed that MY ENTRY TO THE COUNTRY HAS BEEN DENIED as of March 14th. When they asked why, they explained that it was because of my status as “deserter” physician, and that I was out of the country for only three years. I ask myself where your humanity is, and what is the treachery against emigrating doctors, when you are the ones who have forced us to take this decision.

We continue not to understand so unpleasant a situation. On more than one occasion you, in particular, referring to the peak emigration issue, have indicated that current regulations fulfilled their target in previous decades, that they were established for reasons very different than today’s, and that changing them is currently under consideration. When will those promised changes take place?

I want to point out the importance of some of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on December 10th, 1948 by the United Nations, all of which you are in violation of in this case in particular and against the people of Cuba in mass. There are many more.

Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13:  Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country

Article 15.2: No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.3: The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers

Article 22: Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality

Article 23:

(1)Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

I am a deserter? I find that description very inappropriate. Knowing that Cuba is a signatory to the Universal Declaration I decided to establish my residence abroad. If Cuba signed these agreements, why, then am I labeled so contemptuously? Why do we have to endure such maltreatment and the violations we are suffering?

Is it that, in Cuba, the resolutions dictated by a Ministry are above the constitution and the RIGHTS (recognized by Cuba) under which life is organized in the civilized world? I have not betrayed anyone. I am not a worm. Thinking differently is not a crime, it’s a right. If I am a Cuban citizen, why then do I need an entry permit? Why could I not attend my mother’s funeral? How is it possible for you to deny my humanitarian entry permit to visit my elderly and ailing father, or to cry on my mother’s grave, dead for over a year? How is it possible that I have been away from my wife and daughter for 5 years and you will retain them for at least another 5 years?

I do not understand how it is possible that the most  “horrendous and ruthless  government of the world” – according to you EE.UU – authorized the hero and  convicted spy on parole René Gonzalez, to visit his sick brother in Cuba and you “paradigm of human rights” will not allow me to see my father.

I have not committed any act of aggression against Cuba. I just wanted to provide our family and my parents the essential resources which I could not acquire while earning a token salary, the token salary of almost 12 million Cubans for 54 years of post-revolution.

I believe that political issues should not be mixed with those that are purely humanitarian. I think you have established a regime so inflexible and callous that you have forgotten the real HUMAN reasons the Revolution took place. In order to maintain power at all costs, you have betrayed yourselves and, worse yet, you have betrayed our people. You are like Saturn, devouring his own children, and your destination is the same as all totalitarian regimes: disappearance. Look at yourself in Libya’s, Syria’s or Egypt’s mirror. Why are you waiting to change? Can’t you see that the people are suffering, needing, and in the thrones of death? You have created a monster that is devouring and choking us, but worse than that is that you lost control of your own Frankenstein.

Our plea is the same. History will absolve us…. from you.

Most disappointed with the world, and praying to our lord Jesus Christ for a better Cuba, in your absence:

Dr. Rafael Ángel González Pupo