Mi hijo
All the rest is BS
Prominent Doctor Urges Government to 'Rescue' Elian
By Frances Kerry
MIAMI (Reuters) - A pediatrician advising the government on the bitter tug-of-war over Elian
Gonzalez urged authorities on Tuesday to ``rescue' the child from the home of Miami relatives who
are battling to keep the young Cuban shipwreck survivor in the United States.
Dr. Irwin Redlener said a home video released by the relatives last week in which a finger-wagging
Elian told his father he did not want to go back to Cuba ``looked exactly like we might see in a
hostage situation.'
``We think the child should be rescued from there,' Redlener told the NBC ``Today' program on
Tuesday.
The comments by Redlener, president of community pediatrics at Children's Hospital at Montefiore in
New York, followed a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner
Doris Meissner in which he said 6-year-old Elian was being ``horrendously exploited.'
Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, with the passionate support of many Cuban exiles in Miami, has fought for nearly five months
to keep the motherless boy in the United States rather than have him return to communist Cuba with his father.
The case is at an impasse pending rulings from a federal appeals court on a request from the Miami relatives for Elian to stay in the
United States pending their legal appeal for the child to be granted an asylum hearing, and on a government counter-request for
the family to be ordered to turn him over.
It was not clear when those ruling would be handed down. The government, which has accused Lazaro Gonzalez of breaking the
law since he defied a deadline for handing the child over last week, has said that once the court rules it is ready to move to retrieve
the child.
At Meissner's invitation, Redlener helped the INS pick a team of mental health experts who last
week met the boy's great-uncle. Lazaro Gonzalez has looked after the boy since he was rescued
off Florida last November after surviving a disastrous migrant voyage from Cuba in which his
mother and 10 other people died.
In his letter, released by the INS on Monday, Redlener advised the authorities to remove Elian
from the Miami home immediately and return him to his father's custody. The father, Juan Miguel
Gonzalez, has been staying in Washington for nearly two weeks, waiting to take custody of his son.
Calling the child's circumstances ``psychologically abusive,' Redlener said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that Elian is not
attending school, is living in a house that is surrounded by a ``chaotic' environment and has been ``paraded as an object' by his
Miami relatives.
A lawyer for the Miami relatives called Redlener's comments 'absurd,' noting the doctor had not met Elian.
If federal agents have to go to get Elian from his great-uncle's Little Havana house they will do so past a crowd
of supporters of the Miami relatives and rows of media cameras.
Just days after losing his mother and surviving two traumatic days alone at sea on an inner tube, Elian was
thrust into the public eye as his case rapidly became a battle not just between family members but between
fiercely anti-communist Cuban exiles and their nemesis, Cuban President Fidel Castro.
The highly politicized battle has cost the city of Miami nearly $1 million, mostly in extra policing, and likely will
go higher, the Miami Herald said on Tuesday.
Jose Garcia-Pedrosa, an attorney for the Miami relatives, voiced dismay that pediatrician Redlener could reach his conclusions on
Elian without having met the boy, and without having visited the home where he is staying.
In his letter, Redlener said Elian was ``in a state of imminent danger to his physical and emotional well-being in a home that I
consider to be psychologically abusive.'
Redlener said the videotape of Elian saying he didn't want to go back to Cuba showed ``this 6-year-old boy expressing anger and
other most unusual behaviors on what appeared to be a coached, homemade recording.'
The Miami relatives have said they just wanted to show the child speaking with his own voice.
Redlener said the Elian's return to his father would be 'clearly in the best interest of this child who continues to be horrendously
exploited in this bizarre and destructive ambience.'
Castro's government has said that when Elian does get home there will be no public rally with him present, and an end to the
public exposure that has surrounded him in Miami.
But life will not go straight back to normal for Elian, who comes from the provincial town of Cardenas. On Monday, Cuban state
TV showed images of a seaside house in Havana ready to receive Elian and help him readapt to life on the island.
The large house, with a swimming pool, has been prepared as a home and school for Elian, his closest family, 12 schoolmates, and
some teachers, during a ``transition' period of at least three months, child experts told state TV. |
