Elian Gonzalez Asylum Case

* Re “Ruling Moves Elian Closer to Return to Cuba,” June 2: As a child of communism I know too well what hell awaits little Elian Gonzalez if he is returned to Cuba. He will spend most of his day in school, where most of the communist indoctrination goes on. They will force him to deny God and his mother and they will choose his friends. They will tell him what to think and they will try to break his spirit until he no longer has any will or hope for anything but communism.

It is a sad day in America when a child is denied the right to a political asylum hearing. Justice has not been served and I and many other Cuban Americans are deeply saddened by the current outcome of this case. I am as much saddened by the lack of guts the American media have shown by not digging deeper into what is so obvious, the deals being made by the U.S. government under Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro.

This case has been treated the way it has because of the pressure put on by the Clinton administration in its efforts to make peace with the Cuban dictator. There cannot be any peace until Castro is held accountable for the over 100,000 Cubans for whose deaths he is responsible. Clinton has stomped on our dignity and our pain. Now he picks at our wounds by attempting to send Elian back to the hell thousands try to escape from every year, including Elian’s mother, who gave her life to give her son freedom.

ZURAMA MARTINEZ L.

JOHNSTON

Riverside

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Why all the fuss over Elian? If he were an American kid being taken to Cuba to live, I could understand everybody being in an uproar over it. But this is a Cuban kid. He belongs back in Cuba with his father.

And the worst that can happen to him is that he’ll be treated like any other Cuban kid.

HENRIETTE GOLDSMITH

Encino