The Government of Gabriel Boric has reported this Tuesday that the number of Cuban athletes who withdrew from their delegation within the framework of the Pan American Games held in Santiago, Chile has risen to eight. Only one of them has requested refuge. The other seven –six hockey players and one athlete–, who left their team last Saturday and spread across different parts of the country, will define in the next few hours the route to change their immigration status, until now regular, advised by a study of local lawyers. Upon entering the South American country, the Cuban delegation that accompanied the athletes kept their passports. Permits to be in Chile expire next week.
Of the 412 Cuban athletes who traveled to Chile to compete in the games that ended last Sunday, there are still 21 members who remain in the country. “The Cuban delegation entered with what is called an official passport. It is an extraordinary situation. All the rest of the delegations entered with a tourist visa, which was valid for 90 days,” explained the Undersecretary of the Interior of the Government of Gabriel Boric, Manuel Monsalve. The type of passport they were traveling with is granted to Cubans who travel abroad for reasons of interest of certain social, political or state organizations.
Of the seven deserting athletes who have not officially requested refuge, five have their official passport expire on November 12 and two on the 11th. “They could perfectly ask for a renewal of their stay in Chile through a tourist visa,” Monsalve clarified. Last Sunday, the athletes contacted Mijail Bonito, partner of the Hurtado y Bonito Abogados firm, who said this Tuesday in Radio Universe that the competitors “are part of an official delegation from a State, who come with passports issued by that State, which are also retained upon entering Chile and are returned only to leave.”
Bonito, former advisor to the conservative government of Sebastián Piñera on immigration policy, was contacted by the group precisely because he provided legal advice to three other Cuban athletes who defected a few months ago and stayed in Chile. The lawyer pointed out that the athletes who escaped this weekend had to hide from their guards to begin their escape and that this Tuesday they will define what path they will take to avoid falling into the irregularity of their immigration status. The Chilean refugee law first provides a temporary visa for eight months, while waiting for the definition of the refugee application.
When the athletes fled from the Pan American Village, where the competitors stayed during the games, they decided to separate into small groups heading to three different regions of the country where they had acquaintances (Tarapacá, to the north; O’Higgins and Biobío, to the south). Today they returned to Santiago to meet with Bonito this Tuesday and decide whether they will request refuge for humanitarian reasons or political asylum.
The escape of the athletes became known on Saturday night, when Cuban sports journalist Francys Romero He published on his networks that six hockey players “deserted” from the Cuban delegation, which forced the highest authorities to refer to the case. The reporter reported that the athletes in question are Yunia Milanes – the team captain –, Jennifer Martínez, Yakira Guillén, Lismary González, Helec Carta and Geidy Morales. The seventh is Yoao Illas, a Cuban athlete, bronze medalist in the 400 meters hurdles in athletics, who also went to the Hurtado y Bonito study in search of legal advice.
Some 61 Cuban athletes have broken contracts or abandoned their delegations so far this year, according to Romero. One of the most symbolic cases of these Pan American Games was that of Santiago Ford, of Cuban origin, who became a Chilean national at the end of last year. The athlete left the island for sporting reasons when, after achieving fourth place in the 2016 World Youth Championship in Poland, he returned to the island and felt that no one valued him. In 2018 he boarded a plane to Guyana and from there he undertook a long journey by land to Chile, a country he entered walking through the desert. In these games he thanked the South American country by giving them a gold medal in the decathlon competition.
Lautaro Carmona, the president of the Chilean Communist Party, which is part of the Boric Government, celebrated the fifth place of the “great power” of Cuba in the medal table of the Pan American Games (30 gold, 22 silver and 17 bronze) and assured about the case that “there are a number of athletes, which I understand are less than 10, who do not return and who have to see their situation in our country and then they will see it in their country.” “Situations like this have been experienced before and they mean nothing more than a choice made by these athletes (…) What would be the meaning that I could give according to the arguments that appear in some versions? The conditions in which they live in Cuba. And who creates those conditions, if not the economic blockade?” Carmona added on Monday, alluding to the United States sanctions.
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