The Road to Contrition: Cayman Islands, Crimes Against Humanity and the Cuban Refugees

June 20, 2023

By Peter Polack

The treatment of Cuban refugees in the Cayman Islands from 2002 until 2015 has exposed the governments of the Cayman Islands and Cuba, as well as their respective officials, past and present, to potential prosecution by the International Criminal Court. The Cayman Islands may be the first Caribbean country, not Grenada, to face the music. The leader of that determined legal orchestra in The Hague is the formidable English barrister, Karim Khan. Soon, many in the Caribbean will know his name.

Presently in pursuit of mostly African malefactors, the fierce Khan will turn his resolute gaze to those in the Caribbean and Latin American sphere, hopefully. There are many rocks to look under as former government officials with blood on their hands seek to blend in with innocent populations to avoid accountability at the International Criminal Court. It would require a tripling of the ICC budget but what is necessary, is often costly.

The Rome statute that created the ICC makes it clear that the colour of authority is no defence to crimes against humanity. Depriving desperate mariners in fragile vessels from practical assistance, food or water, or worse, forcing some into a watery grave has brought the Cayman Islands into the purview of the prosecutor’s office. In this, a Caribbean island notorious for tax evasion or pirates, will now be mentioned in the same breath as the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar, formerly Burma.

So what now. The Cayman Islands government will likely ignore the road to contrition and pursue the avenues of public relations or obscure legal theory. The relevant, responsible officials should be nervous as this path will see them paddling their own canoe in the fullness. The contrition approach would be things like commissioning a retroactive review of this unfortunate history, acknowledge wrongdoing in that event, seek out those who have been violated to include the families of any deceased, make reparation, remove pro Cuban government Marxist members of the Refugee Protection Appeals Tribunal, make amends to anyone returned to Cuba by this Tribunal where there was a likelihood of bias.

The Cayman Islands has always presented itself as a strong Christian community especially in the decades long opposition to equal rights for the LGBT community. Many should be intimately familiar with the teachings of repentance in the Bible, particularly Luke 13:3, which prophesied that “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish”.

IMAGES: Reuters/Peter Polack

Biography

Peter Polack was a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands for several decades. He is the author of The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2018). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013) and worked as a part-time reporter for Reuters News Agency in the Cayman Islands 2014-19 during the Cuban refugee crisis but now lives in Canada. His work has been published in Small Wars Journal, Defence Procurement International, American Intelligence Journal, U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center magazine, Military Times, Foreign Policy News, EU Today, Radio Free Europe, VOA Portuguese, South Africa Times, History Cooperative, INews Cayman, Jamaica Gleaner, Miami Herald, Reuters, Toronto Star and The New York Times. His latest book entitledSoviet Spies Worldwide: Country by Country, 1940–1988 will be published by McFarland. He is presently researching Cayman Islands: Treatment of Cuban Refugees a Crime Against Humanity.