NAACP hit for policy on Cuba *** MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Cuban dissidents yesterday accused the NAACP of a double standard in its promotion of human rights, defending those of blacks in South Africa while embracing - rather than condemning - the treatment of blacks in Cuba. "I have never heard of a chapter of the NAACP taking an interest in the Cuban Negro," said Eusebio Penalver Mazorra, a black Cuban who spent 28 of his 69 years as a jailed dissident in the communist nation. "While they moved in a precise way for solidarity to get rid of apartheid in South Africa, we have never received their support, even though we have asked for it." ***
Two Cuban Boats Hijacked, Three Dead *** The ministry said the hijackers Francisco Lamas Caron, 29; Luis Alberto Suarez Acosta, 22; and Yosvani Martinez Acosta, 27, shot themselves for unknown reasons. All three had criminal records for stealing cattle, the statement said. But their families said police shot the men after they tried to flee Cuba to avoid being arrested for stealing a pig. "The police killed them. They killed my son. There was no need to do that," said Maria Acosta Valdes, mother of Suarez.
The families said police gave them only two hours to mourn their dead, brought in coffins to their homes on Tuesday morning for quick burial. Armed hijackings are rare in Cuba but have increased this year as economic crisis makes more Cubans want to leave. Two domestic passenger planes were hijacked to Key West, Florida, in March. In April President Fidel Castro's government executed three men who tried to hijack a Havana Bay ferry. The firing squad executions brought wide international condemnation.***