Mexico City/Five Cubans deported by the United States to the Central African Republic present symptoms of diarrhea, headache and fatigue. One of them, Yasmany Moreno, shares with 14ymedio his fear of malaria. “We are taking pills to more or less control this,” he says.
Moreno says that staff from the UN and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have given them a box of doxycycline, a slow-acting antibiotic for the treatment of malaria. “We took them, but now everyone is getting sick here and we are bitten by mosquitoes.”
Doctors Without Borders reported 324,800 malaria cases treated during 2024 in the Central African Republic. “The general lack of prevention and treatment measures causes high infection rates, especially during the rainy season,” he stressed.
Last September, Moreno denounced the precarious conditions in which they were holding around 90 deportees from different countries in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic. They faced receiving only one meal a day, insecurity and not having permission to go out. “I hope the situation does not get worse, nor do we get sick,” he said.
Last September, Moreno denounced the precarious conditions in which around 90 deportees were being held.
Food, according to Moreno, has been one of the causes of the sufferings of Cubans. The most alarming case was that of the Cuban Arístides Fernández García: nausea, fever, diarrhea. “Food handling here is not very good,” denounced the man who left the Island in 2021 due to the siege by State Security since they prevented him from accessing university studies.
Fernández entered the United States that year and after spending six days in custody in Tucson, he received a form I-220A, a document that allowed him to continue his immigration process in freedom.
The 37-year-old man said he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents when he attended his second hearing related to his asylum application in a Miami court.
This Monday, Fernández confirmed that he is ending a seven-month ordeal in prison, “three of them in Bangui. “We are not criminals… Soon we will try to return to the United States, we deserve that opportunity,” he stressed.
The migrant assures that he will travel to Ethiopia and will continue reporting what happens to him: “where I will make another video. From there I will leave for Istanbul, Türkiye.” It is followed by a flight to Colombia and from there to Bolivia.
Last May, the Central African Republic agreed to host migrants expelled by Donald Trump’s government in exchange for $81 million. The pact was questioned by the president of the opposition party Comprehensive Development Movement for Social Progress, Raymond Adouma, who considered it “dishonorable,” in addition to turning the country into a “human dumping ground to which the powerful” send “the unwanted.”
