Report Cuban dissident drowns trying to sneak back to communist island nation from US by boat

Report dissident drowns attempting return to Cuba

MIAMI — A Cuban opposition activist who moved to the U.S. and was denied permission last year to return home has drowned trying to sneak back to the communist island nation aboard a boat, fellow dissidents said Wednesday.

Adrian Leiva left Havana for Miami in 2005 and was allowed to return temporarily in 2008, only to be expelled after his three-month visa expired. He sought permission to return last year and died while attempting to reach Cuba’s shore, fellow exile activist Miguel Saludes said Wednesday.

The Miami Herald first reported Leiva’s death on Tuesday.

Saludes said by telephone in Miami that three men who made the trip aboard a boat with Leiva reached Cuban soil March 23 and were arrested by border guards. The family was told Leiva died while swimming to the coast and authorities had recovered his body.

Leiva’s sister identified the dissident’s remains at the Havana morgue earlier this week, Saludes said.

Saludes said Leiva left Cuba in 2005 as a political refugee with his wife, also a dissident. But after their marriage ended a year later, he longed to return to be with his family, particularly an elderly mother, and continue his work as an activist.

“He felt alone,” Saludes said. “Frustrated. He wasn’t doing what he wanted.”

Cuban government authorities had no immediate comment Wednesday.

Attempts by Cubans to secretly return home after living in the United States are rare. However, many Cubans attempt to flee the island each year, some aided by smuggling gangs with speedboats to ferry them to Mexico or by risking their lives on less-sophisticated craft through the perilous Florida Straits.

Cubans who reach American soil are given medical and physical evaluations and allowed to stay in nearly all cases, while those captured at sea are repatriated. Cuba has long claimed that the U.S. policy encourages Cubans to attempt the crossing.

Hugo Landa, director of CubaNet, a news agency in South Florida that carries the articles of independent Cuban journalists and other activists, said Leiva had pressed for every Cuban to have the right to freely travel in and out of Cuba.

“He is a martyr for that cause,” Landa said Wednesday. Despite the difficult circumstances, Landa said Leiva was “obsessed with returning to live in Cuba.”

“Most people when they leave Cuba, they want so badly to leave that nightmare that it’s not common to hear about anybody who wants to go back,” Landa said.

After being expelled in 2008, Leiva tried to return legally to Havana last year, but was turned away at Miami’s airport after the Cuban government said he would not be allowed in.

In Havana, Leiva had been an independent journalist, working through Miami-based exile media groups including CubaNet, to file dispatches in defiance of tight Cuban government control on most media.

He also was involved in a dissident movement in 2002 led by Oswaldo Paya, who sought a referendum to allow Cubans to vote for or against their communist government and choose to approve guarantees of such rights as free speech and private business ownership. Cuba’s government responded by declaring the measure unconstitutional and approving an amendment making socialism “irrevocable.”

Saludes last spoke with Leiva March 22. His friend told him he had secured passage to Cuba on a boat for the cost of gasoline. Saludes said his friend was in his 50s and overweight, but said he could swim and added that Leiva’s death needs to be properly investigated.

International pressure on Cuba regarding human rights has mounted after the death of another dissident, Orlando Zapata Tamayo. In February, the imprisoned dissident became the first Cuban opposition figure to die after refusing food in nearly four decades.

Another dissident and independent journalist, Guillermo Farinas, began refusing food and water shortly after Zapata Tamayo’s death and has continued so for more than six weeks, though his family has taken him to the hospital periodically for intravenous feedings.

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Havana contributed to this report.