Boat Carrying 396 Haitians Is Feared Sunk Off Cuba

A boat that reportedly left Haiti three weeks ago with nearly 400 refugees is missing, and Cuba has reported finding eight survivors of a sunken craft that could be the lost vessel, the Coast Guard said Sunday.

Cuba told the Coast Guard on Friday of rescuing the eight off Cuba’s northeastern coast on Dec. 23, officials said. The survivors said their vessel, the 70-foot wooden freighter Virgen Mirach, had gone down in the southeastern Bahamas on Dec. 21.

The boat was carrying 396 people when it sank, according to the Cuban report.

The Coast Guard has no direct evidence of any sinking, said Petty Officer Joe Dye, but had heard reports for more than a week that a boat called Vierge Miracle left Haiti on Dec. 19 for a trip to Miami and never arrived.

“The names and dates seem to match,” said Dye. “If it’s true, it’s a real tragedy.”

Rolande Dorancy, head of Miami’s Haitian Refugee Center, said Sunday she had heard from at least a dozen families, starting even before the Cuban report, that a refugee-packed boat was overdue.

Meanwhile, civil rights leaders joined advocates for Haitian refugees in demanding that outside doctors be allowed into an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention camp near Miami to examine hunger strikers.

Sunday marked the 11th day of the fast, and the strikers are showing more physical effects from going without food, Dorancy said. “If we can’t get doctors in, we’re afraid of them dying.”

The strikers at the Krome Avenue Detention Center are protesting the policy that sets most Cuban refugees free soon after arriving in Florida while Haitians are sent home or held for months.

Six men and 39 women were fasting Sunday, refugee advocates said. At the end of last week, the INS was saying the strike was all but over.

Johnnie McMillian, head of the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said Sunday that her group and the refugee center had requested Friday that the strikers be allowed to visit with doctors.