Disclaimer: To everyone who reads the following episode on my blog, please note that this has been an attempt by me to share the happenings in the way I experienced them. It is an attempt to let others know that such things happen in the world and hence they need to be cautious and strong with a will to face any circumstance. This is not a publicity stunt or an attempt at gaining sympathy or empathy. I have not intended this blog to cause any sort of bad publicity to any of the entities involved (although showcasing Bahamas in a bad light is unavoidable) and have tried to write it in an unbiased way. Kindly maintain discretion while reading it or sharing your viewpoints with others. Your comments are welcome anytime. :-)
I am Mr. Sudarshan. S. Tirumalai, an Indian citizen with a valid Indian passport issued at Bangalore, India. I am an employee of one Indian company that specializes in telecom domain software products in OSS/BSS segment. I specialize in the development and implementation of one of my company's product. I am in Havana, Cuba for an implementation project.
I arrived in Havana on 15-Jan-2010 with a business class D-7 type Cuban visa valid for a month. This visa was extended in Havana for a total duration of 90 days with the date of expiry on 15-Apr-2010. The initial estimate for the project completion was in April. But due to extensions in the project, I was required to extend my presence in Cuba for at least another two months. Since it was not possible to extend my visa once again inside Cuba, a new Cuban visa was processed for another three months. But for this new Cuban visa, I was required to exit Cuba and come back. Since, Cuba is my first country of visit outside India, I have never held visa for any other country. For the benefit of the project, it was determined that it is better to visit a country near by Cuba & return, instead of travelling back to India which would delay the project by atleast 3 weeks to a month.
Let there not be any misunderstandings regarding the policies of my company or the agencies which supported me in planning the travel. I have also been in constant touch with all the important contacts in Havana. Everything was well planned and it was my decision to go ahead with the travel to The Bahamas. (Although this trip was mixed up with my official travel, it could have happened any other time. May be when I was travelling completely on personal grounds for a vacation). Everyone was aware of my plans. Who would not like a weekend vacation in one of the great holiday destinations of this world!
Through all the right official channels, I approached the embassy of "The Commonwealth of The Bahamas" in Havana & submitted my visa application form. On this basis, I was issued a single-entry Bahamas visa valid for 3 months (07-Apr-2010 till 07-Jul-2010). In the visa application form I had declared that I have more than 1000 Euros to spend and the entire expense is being covered by my company. During the visa interview, I had mentioned that I will be travelling with part cash and a travelling debit card applicable worldwide. The round trip to Bahamas was arranged with a well known tour operator in Cuba. The package included round trip flight tickets to-fro Havana-Nassau-Havana with 2 nights hotel stay at one of the well known tourist inns in Nassau with transport between hotel & airport. Meals were inclusive too. Nowhere & noone mentioned that it was required to travel to Nassau with exact denomination and currency in cash.
I have recently returned from the HELL called The Bahamas. I am writing about my most horrible experience over there.
I reached Nassau, Bahamas by Air Cubana (CU-0250) around 2:30 PM on Friday, 09-Apr-2010. At the immigration, inspite of having valid passport, visa, necessary reservations and documents, 300 Euros in cash and 3000+ Euros on my international travelling debit card, I was rejected entry into Bahamas on the basis that I did not carry U. S. dollars in cash. My request of sending an officer with me till the ATM in the airport so that I could withdraw dollars in cash to show the amount they require to see was rejected. Since there were no flights back to Cuba till 11-Apr-2010 and I had return tickets for 11th, I was initially made to wait on a sofa in their office. The officers were arrogant & hardly listened to anything I said. During the entire time I was speaking in a calm, soft voice. Never spoke roughly or did anything wrong. Then, one officer asked me to wait inside a room while attending another person & gave no explanations. He locked the door and the room had no drinking water or windows. Just a bed with dark green walls. I was very hungry & feeling weak. It had already triggered my migraine. I called out for someone to open the door around 3 times but there was no response. I spent about 3 hours in solitary confinement. (Between 4:30 PM & 7:00 PM). Such unresponsiveness and solitary confinement is very serious because it can kill an innocent traveller someday.
During my lockup in that room, I heard a conversation between one officer and another person. I do not know the nationality or anything about this traveller. He was having 175 euros in cash. The official said that he was sending an officer with that person to the ATM and if that person is able to show cash in dollars then he will grant entrance. After some time he granted that person a week's stay in The Bahamas. For me, I was not given such an opportunity.
When the door opened, there were 2 officers who handcuffed me & on asking the reason, they informed me that I was being taken to the detention center till the next flight to Cuba which was on Sunday. I was not given an option of a phonecall. I requested the officer to take me to an ATM so that I could withdraw cash & pay for food since I was hungry. I was then taken to an ATM where I withdrew 500 dollars. I bought some food. The officer handcuffed me again & told to eat the food at the detention center.
When I reached the detention center (must be the one on Carmichael Road), I was fingerprinted, photographed & all my belongings were taken into custody. I told the officer that there are people waiting to hear from me & I wanted to make a phone call. That officer took 5 US dollars & charged his cellphone. I tried to call all the numbers that I know in Cuba including the Indian embassy, my colleagues / friends but I was not able to reach any of the phone numbers. The officer returned the 5 dollars. I told I needed to get in touch with the Indian embassy representation in Bahamas. He told it may be possible on Saturday. This was just a lie as I found out later. Then I was sent to the place where all the inmates are kept. The conditions inside were very horrible, bad, dirty, inhuman and overcrowded with about 70 Haitians, 20 Cubans, 7 Jamaicans, 2 Sri Lankans, 1 Brazilian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Kenyan and some others from other nationalities I don't remember. I spent 2 nights in there.
It is the most horrible kind of a place for the detention center where someone has written on the entrance – “Welcome To HELL”.
The building was just a very big room with two huge doors at the two ends. On both sides of the wall there were bunkers for people to sleep. I have never come across people behaving the way the Haitians were behaving (no offence against them), which was rough and needed some strength to get adjusted to. Luckily for me, the Cubans took me to their group, supported me and made sure I got a good place to sit or sleep on the bunkers. They even shared some stuff they had with me like blanket, some extra soft drink which they got or an ice cube for the water. My ability to more or less communicate in Spanish and their broken simple English allowed us to communicate with each other well.
The bunkers were so dirty, I do not know when they were last cleaned or washed. There were a lot of human hair on the bunkers and other dusty, dirty things. The windows at the top had no panes and hence there was no protection from the chilly night winds. I saw many Haitians sleeping on the floor and near the toilet. The toilet itself was stinking horrible. The potty did not have flush, it was filled to the brim with urine and the floor was covered with it too. There was no door and the people managed their privacy by covering it with a cloth curtain. It was stinking so bad that it was not possible to stand even for a second without feeling like vomiting. There were mosquitoes, ants, spiders and other bugs moving about in the premises.
Due to all these reasons of unhygenic conditions, apart from suffering from the migraine which I already had, I had insect bites especially those of mosquitoes and since I am allergic to dust, it caused me a lot of discomfort. Also, because of the dirtiness of the toilet, I had to make sure I visit it as less as possible because I consider it a torture.
Then, every night at 00:00 hrs (12:00 AM), everyone had to come out for getting counted. Then, it was time to sleep. The night was very chilly. Thankfully, one Cuban gave a spare blanket he had and I survived the chill and was able to sleep for a while. Again in the morning, there was counting at 8 AM. The first meal was given between 10 AM and 11 AM. On Saturday, there was some slimy white, hot stuff which looked like a sick man’s porridge, two slices of bread and a cup of some brown liquid. None of them had any taste and they were horrible. To survive, I ate them. Then again there was a counting around 1 PM. Then snacks was provided at 2:30 PM. For all these things, people had to stand in a line and go take their share of food which some officer was handing out. In snacks, there were two loaves of bread with something in between. I don’t know what it was. I don’t even know if anything was vegetarian or non-vegetarian and if non-veg, which meat was it. The last meal for the day was given at 5 PM, which on Saturday was cold spaghetti that stuck to each other like a rock with some meat stuff on top of it. Everything was horrible. It needed a lot of strength to push down the throat and stop myself from the urge to throw up. For drinking water, there was a 20 litres can which one of the inmates refilled from a tap near the fence and this can was placed over a water filter which has options for hot, normal, cold water.
On Saturday I witnessed two fights. There is a single television at one corner for the entire crowd. People were watching a good movie when a Haitian switched the channel to put a soccer match. Another non-Haitian person switched the channel back to the movie. Then another Haitian walked upto the television and switched it off. That was enough to trigger a fight. It lasted for a short while. But quickly the people calmed down. The other one which I witnessed was more brutal. Among the Haitians, someone picked up a physical fight over the use of the toilet. They started punching each other and verbally abusing and swearing. The army officers intervened to stop their fight.
A thing or two about all these officers which I came across. Except a few (one or two) exceptions who spoke softly, with cheerful attitude; the rest of the lot had this sadistic, haughty, bad attitude in them and used verbally abusive language with a lot of swear words. I had never come across such hostile behaviour till then. Now I know that there exists such horrible places and people on this planet.
The whole place is covered with mesh and barbed wires and officers in military outfit with shotguns and rifles on guard all the time. Then, on Sunday, in the morning at around 9:30 AM, an officer called my name and asked me to get ready to go to the airport. At the detention center, someone had written my nationality in their records as Jamaican. I had to explain to the officer that I was Indian and have never held a Jamaican citizenship nor visited Jamaica ever in my life. I reached the airport along with the two Sri Lankans at around 10 AM. The officer took the Sri Lankans to put them on Bahamasair flight to Cuba which was in the morning. Since my Cuban flight reservations was at 14:30 hrs, another officer put me into solitary confinement once again. Before it, I requested the officer to get me some food to eat since I had not eaten since 5:00 PM the previous evening. They were not even aware when the inmates in the detention center are given food. I had to pay six dollars for the officer to arrange some food for me. I also told the officer that I had 450 Bahamian dollars which I needed to convert to U. S. dollars. The officer agreed and then locked me up. This was around 10:30 AM. When someone opened the door of that room, it was 14:00 hrs. They asked me where my passport was. I had to tell them that all my documents were in their possession. Then, they searched all my documents, passport and hurried me to the Cuban aircraft.
The aircraft was about to leave. I was not even checked in, due to which I do not have a boarding pass. The immigration office had not informed the airlines that I had to board the aircraft. The officer just handed me over to the Cuban airline official mentioning to him that I had arrived in The Bahamas on the 9th of April and was rejected to land. There was no criminal record or deportation. I am a case of rejection and since there are no frequent flights to Cuba, I was kept in detention. There are no stampings of any kind in my passport on the Bahamas visa from the Immigration. (No entry date stamp, no exit date stamp and no stamps of rejection or deportation).
When I asked the immigration officer about my request of converting the Bahamian dollars, he just bluntly told that there was no time for all such things. The Cuban airline official asked me to pay 42 dollars as tax for which I was not given any receipt. I was tired already, been through enough and I was in no mood to argue. The return flight was Air Cubana (CU-0251). I just wanted to get away from that hell with such unfriendly, greedy, insensitive, liars lacking the basic sense of human values. They left me no choice except to believe that for them, if you are filthy rich having thousands of U. S. dollars to freely spend in their country or on business having valid U. S. passports or visa then you are welcome there. Else, for them you are a piece of unworthy nobody.
Such an incident which happened to me is not isolated. The two Sri Lankans who were released the same day as me; they too reached Bahamas from Cuba with all the valid documents. They even had 1500 U. S. dollars in cash, but they were rejected and kept at the detention center for a week with no valid reason given to them. Then the Hungarian citizen, who is a Lawyer, specializing in international justice, having valid U. S. & Bahamas visas, was in Bahamas. He suffered a heart attack the day before his visa expired and was to leave Bahamas. He was hospitalized. The doctors in the hospital gave a letter to the immigration mentioning his health condition and he being unfit to travel. The immigration did not extend his stay and did not allow him to travel. He was put in the detention center along with his wife and four children. All his four children are minors, U. S. citizens, have valid U. S. passports, the youngest kid being three years old and the eldest being 14 years old. So, the youngest detainee in that center is a three year old boy!!!
I reached Cuba at 5:00 PM, 11-Apr-2010 and I explained to the Cuban immigration about the whole thing why I went to Bahamas, the things which happened there and all the other details which they asked. Again, my ability to communicate more or less in Spanish came to my help because I spoke to them almost completely in Spanish with few things in sign language and English words. They said that there is no problem, stamped my new Cuban visa and let me out of the airport.
Only then I was able to tell my experience. Until then everyone was unaware of all this and thought that I was having one of my best weekend vacations of my life.
I got in touch with the concerned agencies in Havana, Cuba and I have informed them about this incident. Currently, I am planning on further steps of action which can be taken in this regard.
- Sudarshan. [20 April, 2010]
P.S.:
1)
No offence against the Bahamas which I did not get to see. But, the Bahamas which the Bahamians showed me really deserves the term - "HELL".
2)
Well, I have not yet received any response from some of the agencies to which I had sent a complaint. Sometimes, I feel that taking any action out of rage and for vengeance causes more damage to self than to the intended opponents.
A week's break from everything to just rest after the episode, meeting people & having fun with them, watching funny comedies (i just love the way comedians bring laughter in people even when they are hinting at some serious issue), meeting / speaking with some of the family members of the Cuban persons whom I met & befriended in the detention center and handing over their letters & items to them were enough to absolve me and for me to regain my composure.
"I might have been shaken up for a short while but never ever was I broken, because I refuse to be broken down by anyone".
- April 30, 2010.
3)
An update - recently received an official email from the agency to whom I had reported this incident. In that email the concerned agencies in Bahamas with whom the matter was taken up had officially regretted the incident and had ordered an official investigation into it.
I feel a bit happy knowing that this did not go the way of the blind and the deaf.
With that I am looking forward to visit Cancun, Mexico in a couple of days.
- July 04, 2010.
