Some of the Cubans detained during the 11J protests. Photo taken from ADNCuba
The non-governmental human rights group Justicia 11J in their most recent report, according to Marti News, found that of 564 people put on trial in Cuba for protesting against the Cuban government 519 have been condemned, 40 are awaiting sentencing, and only five were found not guilty. They also found that the number that they had documented as detained rose from 1,444 to 1,470 Cubans detained for taking part in the July protests. According to Justicia 11J, " of the total number of demonstrators prosecuted judicially, or awaiting trial, between 70 and 80% have awaited (or are awaiting) trial under provisional detention."
The Washington Post editorial board on June 27, 2022 gave their view that "With the world distracted, Cuba cracks down on dissident artists" focusing on the sentencing of Maykel Castillo Pérez “Osorbo” and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara to nine and five years in prison respectively.
No doubt the Cuban regime has issued these punishments on the assumption that they will receive little notice, or condemnation, from a world distracted by war in Ukraine, inflation and other serious problems. All the more reason to spend a few moments understanding the nature of these brave men’s protests — and why the dictatorship finds them particularly threatening.
Like many of the most oppressed and alienated people in Cuba, both Mr. Castillo and Mr. Otero are Black. Both come from humble economic circumstances. Both have made innovative careers in Cuban popular culture: The former is a rapper; the latter, a performance artist and sculptor. And both have defiantly expressed resistance to the regime through art. Mr. Otero is one of the founders of the San Isidro Movement, begun in 2018 by journalists, academics and artists to protest heightened censorship. In tandem with Black Cuban artists in exile, Mr. Castillo and Mr. Otero took part in a music video for the hip-hop freedom anthem “Patria y Vida” — “Fatherland and Life” — which went viral in February 2021. A clever, catchy reversal of the regime’s slogan “Patria o Muerte” — “Fatherland or Death” — the piece eventually won song of the year at the Latin Grammys. On July 11, its words were on the lips of many who joined the protests.
In a statement, Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Americas director at Amnesty International, stated: “They are two emblematic examples of how Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government uses the judicial system to criminalize critical voices, including through charges of alleged crimes that are incompatible with international law.” She called for their immediate release, reported ARTnews.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara and Maykel Castillo Pérez sentenced to prison for 5 and 9 years.
Havana does not permit international or domestic oversight of prison conditions, good statistics on its overall prison population are difficult to come by, and officials infrequently provide data on prisons. This data cannot be independently verified. The UN Committee Against Torture on April 29, 2022 reported that the Cuban government had not provided prison population figures since 2012. The information that is provided sporadically is misleading. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) over the past 63 years only had access to Cuban prisons between 1988 and 1989. In contrast the ICRC visited the U.S. Guantanamo detention facility over 100 times since 2002, when the United States began housing prisoners, and during those same 20 years the Castro regime permitted zero visits of the ICRC to Cuban prisons.
The Cuban government is a totalitarian dictatorship that through brutal means has held on to power for 63 years, and successfully exported its repressive model to Nicaragua, and Venezuela causing refugee outflows from those two countries as well. The U.S. Coastguard announced on June 28, 2022 that another 77 Cubans had been repatriated to Cuba after being intercepted trying to reach the United States. The U.S. Coast Guard said it has intercepted 2,900 Cuban migrants at sea this fiscal year, up from just 838 in the previous fiscal year and 49 in 2020.
Andrea Rodriguez, of the Associated Press based in Cuba, published the report on June 28, 2022 titled "Cuban troops report fatal clash with Florida speedboat," and it raises concerns. When officials of the Cuban dictatorship make claims "they have intercepted more than a dozen speedboats arriving from the United States [in 2022] — including two shooting incidents and at least one death." Their claims cannot be taken at face value. This makes their statement that "U.S. authorities have handed over a suspect in the shooting of a Cuban coast guard officer" deeply concerning, if true.
Consider the following.
On March 26, 2016 "seven Cuban migrants, all with gunshot wounds, were interdicted at sea and taken to south Florida hospitals," reported The Guardian, adding thaat "the US coast guard’s public affairs office told [ the Keynoter ] newspaper the wounded were on a makeshift raft with another 19 migrants, who were not injured."
Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. A group of young men were building a small boat near Menéndez beach to flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and were shot at by state security. Yuriniesky was left for two days in the lagoon, before being found by his brother.
Yuriniesky Martínez with his dad, and son. On (right) how he was found
On July 13, 1994, a group of Cubans, including children and women, tried to escape from Cuba aboard the "13 de marzo" tugboat. State Security forces, and four Transportation Ministry boats of the Cuban government intercepted the "13 de marzo" seven miles off the coast of Cuba, with water jets from pressure hoses knocked people off the deck, tore the children from the arms of their mothers and sank the tugboat. 37 people were murdered, 11 of them children.
In 1993 U.S. officials charged that Cuban marine patrols repeatedly tossed grenades, strafed fleeing swimmers with automatic weapons fire, and recovered bodies with gaff hooks, within sight of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Clinton Administration filed a formal protest to the Cuban government regarding the brutality visited on Cuban migrants. According to the U.S. protest, U.S. military guards surveying the bay witnessed five separate incidents:
* On June 19 at 2 p.m., U.S. guards, startled by the sounds of detonations, saw Cuban troops aboard patrol boats dropping grenades in the paths of several swimmers headed for the U.S. base.
* On June 20 at 1:30 p.m., Cuban troops repeated the action, then strafed the water with machine-gun fire.
* On June 26 at 11 a.m., three patrol boats surrounded a group of swimmers, lobbing grenades and spraying them with automatic weapons fire. At least three corpses were lifted out of the water with gaffs.
* On June 27 at 11:30 a.m., guards aboard patrol boats lobbed two grenades into the water.
* The same day, just before 3 p.m., a patrol boat opened automatic fire on a group of swimmers, who were later seen being pulled from the water. The swimmers' status was unknown.
A 1995 monograph by academics Holly Ackerman and Juan Clark, The Cuban Balseros: Voyage of Uncertainty reported that “as many as 100,000 Cuban rafters may have perished trying to leave Cuba.”
The dictatorship in Cuba is a criminal regime that murders migrants, harbors cop killers, terrorists, and cannot be trusted.
The Washington Post, June 27, 2022
Opinion
With the world distracted, Cuba cracks down on dissident artists
By the Editorial Board
Relatives of Cuban dissident artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel "Osorbo" Castillo wait outside the Marianao Municipal Court (background) in Havana on May 30, 2022, where the trials against them are being held. (Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images)
It has been nearly a year since Cuba’s streets erupted in mass protests. July 11, 2021, sent a thrill through supporters of freedom around the world — and a fearful chill down the spines of Cuba’s rulers. The dictatorship brutally suppressed the revolt and has spent the months since systematically bolstering its apparatus of political control. As part of that, the regime has been rounding up and punishing those who took part in the demonstrations, and in the dissident ferment that preceded them. Some 725 people are in detention, according to the U.S.-based human rights group Cubalex. And on June 24, the regime delivered stiff prison sentences to two of the movement’s best-known leaders, Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.
No doubt the Cuban regime has issued these punishments on the assumption that they will receive little notice, or condemnation, from a world distracted by war in Ukraine, inflation and other serious problems. All the more reason to spend a few moments understanding the nature of these brave men’s protests — and why the dictatorship finds them particularly threatening.
Like many of the most oppressed and alienated people in Cuba, both Mr. Castillo and Mr. Otero are Black. Both come from humble economic circumstances. Both have made innovative careers in Cuban popular culture: The former is a rapper; the latter, a performance artist and sculptor. And both have defiantly expressed resistance to the regime through art. Mr. Otero is one of the founders of the San Isidro Movement, begun in 2018 by journalists, academics and artists to protest heightened censorship. In tandem with Black Cuban artists in exile, Mr. Castillo and Mr. Otero took part in a music video for the hip-hop freedom anthem “Patria y Vida” — “Fatherland and Life” — which went viral in February 2021. A clever, catchy reversal of the regime’s slogan “Patria o Muerte” — “Fatherland or Death” — the piece eventually won song of the year at the Latin Grammys. On July 11, its words were on the lips of many who joined the protests.
The Opinions Essay: ‘Liberation is born from the soul’: Oswaldo Payá’s struggle for a free Cuba
The regime is now getting payback for this devastating blow to its international image. Having been savagely beaten by state security agents two months after the video’s release, Mr. Castillo, 39, was arrested in May 2021 and has been in prison ever since. The nine-year sentence he just received was for murky offenses such as “contempt” and “defamation of institutions and organizations, heroes and martyrs,” as well as “assault,” an apparent reference to his attempts to fend off the police. (Three others were penalized for helping Mr. Castillo resist arrest, including one man sentenced to five years.) Mr. Otero got five years for similar trumped-up offenses, as well as “insulting national symbols,” an apparent reference to his use of the Cuban flag in his performances.
This latest gross human rights violation vindicates President Biden’s refusal to permit Cuba’s attendance at the recent Summit of the Americas; it should embarrass Latin American governments, led by Mexico, that protested that exclusion. Any regime that jails peaceful artists deserves all the denunciation the world can muster.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/27/cuba-july-11-protests-castillo-otero/
Local 10, June 28, 2022
Coast Guard repatriates 77 people to Cuba
By Andrea Torres, Digital Journalist
The U.S. Coast Guard released this photograph on Tuesday after repatriating a group of 77 migrants to Cuba. (USCG)
MIAMI – The U.S. Coast Guard announced a crew repatriated 77 migrants on Tuesday to Cuba amid an ongoing increase in migration from the communist island.
The migrants risked their lives to cross the Florida Straits during their failed attempt to get to the U.S. in what the Coast Guard described as “rustic” vessels. The Coast Guard found them near the Florida Keys.
On Saturday, crews intercepted part of the group at about 4:10 p.m., some 50 miles south of Ramrod Key, and another group at about 6:25 p.m., about 6 miles south of Boot Key. On Sunday, crews intercepted a third group of migrants at about 9:20 a.m., some 12 miles south of Marathon.
The U.S. Coast Guard also reported so far they have intercepted 2,967 Cuban migrants since October. The tally surpasses the 2,927 Cuban migrants the Coast Guard intercepted during the last four fiscal years (2017-2021).
“We will continue to put a high priority on patrolling offshore to prevent illegal migration, save lives by removing migrants from unsafe environments, and deterring dangerous illegal migrant activity,” Lt. Connor Ives, of U.S. Coast Guard District Seven, said in a statement.
https://www.local10.com/news/local/2022/06/28/coast-guard-repatriates-77-people-to-cuba/
Associated Press, June 28, 2022
Cuban troops report fatal clash with Florida speedboat
By ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ
HAVANA (AP) — Cuban authorities say they have intercepted more than a dozen speedboats arriving from the United States this year — including two shooting incidents and at least one death. They say U.S. authorities have handed over a suspect in the shooting of a Cuban coast guard officer.
The Interior Ministry statement read over state television Monday night comes amid a sharp increase in migration from Cuba to the United States, both by sea and via Mexico, at a time of economic hardships aggravated by the pandemic and by tightened U.S. sanctions.
The ministry said its coast guard units had intercepted 13 speedboats from the U.S. entering Cuban waters this year, with 23 crew members. It was not clear how many of the boats might have reached shore or how many of those aboard were arrested. It mentioned at least some arrests, but also at least one case in which a boat escaped.
“Recently situations of greater violence and aggressiveness have occurred, with the use of firearms” against Cuban coast guard units, the ministry said.
It said in one incident, agents intercepted a Dakota speedboat with a Florida registration number 3 nautical miles north of Bahia Honda, on the coast west of Havana, and were fired upon. The ministry said troops returned fire, killing one of those aboard the speedboat.
That boat was detained, and the ministry said it found drugs and evidence of firearms use aboard. It said U.S. authorities were informed about the identities of those arrested and the man who died.
In another case on June 18, it said people aboard a speedboat near Cayo Fragoso off the central Cuban province of Villa Clara opened fire with an automatic weapon at close range, wounding one Cuban officer, and then raced of northward as Cubans evacuated the wounded man for treatment.
It said Cuban officials notified the U.S. Coast Guard, asking for help to detain the attackers. On Monday, one Cuban citizen “implicated in the aggression” had been returned to the island, it said, under an agreement by which the U.S. returns Cubans attempting to immigrate illegally.
“In parallel,” it said, 30 people who were trying to leave the island were found by Interior Ministry agents and were being investigated.
In a separate statement Monday, the Interior Ministry said its coast guard troops found six of 15 people who had set out in makeshift board that sank last week. It said there was no word on what happened to the other nine.
The 15 apparently had set out from the area of Playa Jibacoa along the coast east of Havana on June 20.
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported finding about 140,000 Cuban migrants between October last year and the end of May — a number that surpassed the so-called Mariel exodus of 1980, when 125,000 Cubans reached the U.S.
The U.S. Coast Guard said Monday week that so far this fiscal year it has intercepted 2,900 Cuban migrants at sea, up from just 838 in the previous fiscal year and 49 in 2020.
Andrea Rodríguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP
ARTnews, June 27, 2022
Cuban Dissident Artists Sentenced to Prison, Drawing International Condemnation
By Tessa Solomon June 27, 2022 1:57pm
Diplomats from several countries waited outside the closed court building where the trial was conducted for Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara and Maykel Castillo in Havana in May. AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez received sentences of five and nine years in prison, respectively, following trials in Cuba. Their imprisonment has drawn condemnation from international human rights groups, who accused the Cuban government of retaliating against the artists’ involvement in protests over the falling standard of life on the island.
In a statement, Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Americas director at Amnesty International, said both Otero Alcántara and Castillo Pérez “are artists who have used art as a means of expressing their views on the social, political and economic conditions in Cuba.”
“They are two emblematic examples of how Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government uses the judicial system to criminalize critical voices, including through charges of alleged crimes that are incompatible with international law,” she added, calling for their immediate release.
Castillo Pérez is the author of “Motherland and Life,” a song which became the anthem for mass demonstrations in Cuba in 2021 against food and medicine scarcity, the crackdown on creative expression, and the government’s inadequate response to the pandemic. He was detained by state security officials in May of that year. Otero Alcántara, a leader of the artist-led San Isidro protest movement, was arrested traveling to a protest in Havana that July.
Otero Alcántara was transferred without a court hearing to a maximum-security prison in Guanajay, and was detained for seven months without a trial, despite a Cuban law requiring prisoners be released after six months of detainment.
According to the Human Rights Watch, the artists were arraigned on a range of charges including public disorder, contempt, and in Otero Alcántara’s case, “insulting national symbols” for his use of the Cuban flag in the performance piece Drapeau, in which he wore or carried the flag uninterrupted for a month.
Earlier this year, Otero Alcántara began a hunger strike to protest his conditions, spurring concern from the international art community over the state of his health. Few updates were offered by the prison.
In February, artist Coco Fusco, working with activists Yaxys Cires Dib, Eloy Viera, and Armando Chaguaceda, released an open letter urging foreign governments, especially those in Latin America and Europe, to intervene in his case. The letter was later turned into a a petition on Change.org that concluded with the statement: “Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has dedicated his life and his art to the Cuban people. He should not have to sacrifice his life. The Cuban government cannot be allowed to rob him of his life.”
Hundreds of protesters and bystanders were arrested during the largely peaceful protests throughout Cuba. Some of the people who were detained are still in judicial proceedings, according to the Human Rights Watch.
In February, 20 protestors, including several under the age of 18, were convicted on charges of sedition; many were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. Meanwhile, dozens of Cuban artists, activists, and journalists have reportedly been jailed, prosecuted, or forced into exile by the Cuban government.
Castillo Pérez and Otero Alcántara were among the artists who who were offered their freedom in exchange for their exile from Cuba, a “historic practice by the Cuban government that has been applied to other critics in recent months, in violation of the right to enter one’s own country,” said Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in a joint statement.
Otero Alcántara rejected the offer in a public statement.
“For my part, as long as music gives me strength, even if they stick me in the most hidden dungeon of Guantánamo or under a stone, I will look for a way for my art to reach you and continue staking my bet on freedom,” he wrote.
From the Archives
The Guardian, March 27, 2016
Seven Cuban migrants found at sea with gun wounds sent to Florida hospitals
US coast guard tells newspaper the wounded were on raft with 19 others who were not hurt, amid rumors that migration policy could change
Six of the Cuban migrants were airlifted to Miami trauma centers. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA
By Associated Press in Miami
Seven Cuban migrants, all with gunshot wounds, were interdicted at sea and taken to south Florida hospitals.
The wounded Cubans were found Saturday afternoon, according to the Keynoter.
The US coast guard’s public affairs office told the newspaper the wounded were on a makeshift raft with another 19 migrants, who were not injured.
The migrants who do not need medical attention will likely be repatriated. The injured were taken to Lower Keys medical center on Stock Island. Six were airlifted to Miami trauma centers.
Earlier this year, authorities said Cuban migrants desperate to reach US shores were increasingly violent and noncompliant with coast guard crews who detained them at sea, citing reports of attempted poisoning and self-inflicted wounds as rumors swirl that the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy will soon be abandoned.
Last week, a cruise ship rescued 18 migrants on board a 30ft boat, and found that nine migrants had died on the ship while trying to make the 130-mile crossing from Cuba to Florida. About 8,000 Cuban migrants have become trapped in Costa Rica in the last year as well, unable to cross legally through Central America to the United States, though a small number have acquired visas and chartered flights.
Since relations between the US and Cuba began to thaw in December 2014, thousands more Cubans have been attempting the harrowing journey on makeshift boats or through the deserts and jungles of Central America. Last week, Barack Obama met with Cuban president Raúl Castro in Havana, a symbolic high point of the rapprochement between former enemies, but also a sign to many Cubans that it will become more difficult to find political asylum in the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/27/cuba-us-relations-wounded-migrants-florida
Miami Herald, July 7, 1993
U.S. RIPS CUBA'S 'EXTREME CRUELTY' PROTESTS 3 KILLINGS NEAR BASE
CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS and DAVID HANCOCK Herald Staff Writers
Cuban marine patrols, determined to stop refugees from reaching the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, have repeatedly tossed grenades and shot at fleeing swimmers and recovered some bodies with gaff hooks, U.S. officials charged Tuesday.
At least three Cubans have been killed in the past month as Cuban patrol boats attacked swimmers within sight of U.S. Navy personnel at Guantanamo.
The killings are the latest sign that Cuba is resorting to violent means to stop a torrent of desperate people from fleeing the impoverished island.
"This is the most savage kind of behavior I've ever heard of," said Robert Gelbard, deputy assistant secretary of state for Latin America. The United States has no previous record of such activity in Cuba, he added, calling the practice "even worse than what happened at the Berlin Wall."
The Clinton administration filed a formal protest Monday with the government of President Fidel Castro, calling on Havana to "immediately cease these barbaric practices," said a State Department aide.
News of the attacks at Guantanamo comes amid a fierce crackdown by Cuban authorities on residents who try to leave the country.
On Thursday, Cuban patrols killed three people who tried to swim to a U.S.-registered speedboat near the town of Cojimar. The captain, a U.S. citizen and Florida Keys resident, was injured in a hail of bullets. A fifth man, also from South Florida, escaped.
In separate incidents Friday and Monday, authorities seized boats near Havana and Santa Cruz del Norte, arresting seven U.S. residents as they sought to help scores of relatives flee the island.
The men captured Monday were Cuban rafters who had spent only two months in this country.
"My brother did not want to live without his wife and two children," said Camilo Bourzac, 28, whose brother Ernesto, 31, is now in jail on the island.
The attacks on swimmers in Guantanamo Bay drew especially sharp criticism because the refugees might easily have been detained without violence, U.S. officials said. "The idea of blowing people up when they are vulnerable underwater is appalling," Gelbard said.
A State Department aide called the use of gaffs, usually used to pull gamefish into boats, to pull bodies from the water "an act of extreme cruelty."
According to the U.S. protest, U.S. military guards surveying the bay have witnessed five separate incidents:
* On June 19 at 2 p.m., U.S. guards, startled by the sounds of detonations, saw Cuban troops aboard patrol boats dropping grenades in the paths of several swimmers headed for the U.S. base.
* On June 20 at 1:30 p.m., Cuban troops repeated the action, then strafed the water with machine-gun fire.
* On June 26 at 11 a.m., three patrol boats surrounded a group of swimmers, lobbing grenades and spraying them with automatic weapons fire. At least three corpses were lifted out of the water with gaffs.
* On June 27 at 11:30 a.m., guards aboard patrol boats lobbed two grenades into the water.
* The same day, just before 3 p.m., a patrol boat opened automatic fire on a group of swimmers, who were later seen being pulled from the water. The swimmers' status was unknown.
U.S. officials said they did not know how many people had been killed in the recent Guantanamo incidents, but said at least three could not have survived the attacks.
The number of Cubans seeking to reach Guantanamo, where they can apply for political asylum, has surged this year.
The base, which remains the last Western outpost in a Communist nation, reports that 195 Cubans have reached the facility this year, more than the total of 152 for all of 1992.
The statistic stands in even greater contrast to the years prior to the end of the Cold War: in 1988, 21 Cubans reached the Guantanamo base; in 1989, there were only 12.
About 90 percent of the refugees come by sea, crossing the bay waters in small craft or by swimming. Fences, guard posts and several strips of minefields deter those attempting to enter the base by land.
U.S. diplomats who presented the protest note to the Foreign Ministry in Havana warned that the use of explosives so close to the U.S. base could be considered a "provocative act." The diplomats also lodged a separate protest Monday of last Thursday's shooting against the Key West-registered speedboat, the Midnight Express. They described the act as "an excessive use of force" against a boat that posed no danger to Cuba.
A Washington source said Tuesday that the boat's pilot, Ricky Hoddinott, who suffered gunshot wounds to the legs, told a U.S. diplomat that he and Hugo Portilla, a Cuban exile living in Miami, had traveled to Cuba to pick up five or six people.
However, when the Midnight Express approached Cojimar, between 50 and 100 people were waiting on the beach. About 30 jumped aboard and the boat began pulling away. At that point, Cuban Frontier Guards opened fire.
Hoddinott told the official that he raised his hands in surrender but the guards continued firing. Cuban officials said the troops were firing at the engines to disable the boat.
The State Department has not determined whether any of the others jailed in Cuba over the weekend are U.S. citizens. U.S. envoys in Havana have not visited the others or been asked to do so, officials said.
Cuban officials in Washington defended the crackdown on illegal entries into Cuban territory.
"We are going to continue picking up all boats that keep arriving in Cuban waters with the goal of smuggling people," said Jose Luis Ponce, spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. "We are not going to allow them to continue violating our sovereignty."
Herald staff writers Cynthia Corzo and Maria Morales contributed to this report.
WHO'S WHO
* The Cuban government seized a third boat on Sunday. Here is a list of who was on board: THIRD BOAT
* Jose Maria Garcia Vega
Status: In Cuban jail.
Residence: Hialeah.
Age: 35
Known relatives: In Hialeah, mother Mercedes Vega. In Cuba, a wife and two children ages 2 and 3.
* Ernesto Wilfredo Bourzac Nieto
Status: In Cuban jail.
Residence: Hialeah.
Age: 31
Known relatives: In Miami Lakes, brother Camilo Bourzac. In Cuba, wife Martha, and sons Osvaldo, 2, and Wilfredo, 4.
* Jose Farinas Grova
Status: In Cuban jail.
Residence: Unknown.
Age: Unknown.
Known relatives: Unknown.
FLEEING CUBA
Refugees reaching U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay:
1988 21
1989 12
1990 63
1991 228
1992 152
*1993 195
*As of July 6
Source: U.S. State Department
Cuban rafters picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard:
1988 58
1989 391
1990 497
1991 2,173
1992 2,557
*1993 1,131
*As of July 6
Source: U.S. Coast Guard