The 1976 downing of a passenger airliner off Barbados, the first such international terrorist attack in the Americas, should be commemorated as an international day against terrorism, Ambassador to CARICOM David Comissiong has suggested.
At the annual wreath-laying ceremony to mark the Cubana air crash, he declared: “October 6, 1976, is a day that should never be forgotten in world history, and it is time the international community commemorates it as the International Day Against Terrorism since it was the first time we in the western hemisphere ever encountered a major incident of this nature.
“If we can do this, that would be the most positive thing we can extract from this horrible human tragedy.”
Comissiong, made the declaration at the Paynes Bay monument erected in memory of the 73 passengers and crew who perished when a Cubana aircraft exploded off Barbados shortly after take-off on that date.
The incident was attributed to two bombs planted on board the aircraft by two anti-Cuba activists, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch-Avila, both of whom never went to trial for the incident.
Comissiong said that on the 40th anniversary in 2016, when he was acting in a previous capacity as an activist “in collaboration with the families of the deceased, representatives of the Cuba Five, (movie star and political activist) Danny Glover, representatives from Guyana, Barbados, and Cuba, passed a resolution calling on the United Nations to declare an international day against terrorism, and to select October 6 as that day.
“Several CARICOM governments got this proposal; we got automatic agreement from St Vincent’s Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, and Barbados’ then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxine McClean, said she would support it in principle. We have not heard anything more since then, but we believe it needs to be revisited.”
Comissiong said Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean continue to see Cuba as a neighbour and a friend and would never join in the efforts to undermine the country’s progress.
He expressed concern that the Trump administration in the United States had been undermining the positive steps his predecessor, Barack Obama, had taken to rekindle a relationship with Havana.
He cited the implementation of Article 3 of the Helms-Burton law, which “purports to give American, and Cuban citizens who have since received American nationality, the right to initiate court proceedings in America against people from other countries who happen to be doing business with Cuba, and are according to Americans, trafficking in property that once belonged to them, although Cuba nationalised some of these properties many years ago”.
Adelle Williams-Jewell, the sister of one of the victims of the crash, 18-year-old Jacqueline Williams, said she still felt the pain associated with the incident 43 years later.
She said: “I also lost two other people I knew in the crash, namely Raymond Persaud and Ann Nelson, who were heading to Cuba to study medicine.
“The average age of the passengers was about 25 years old, they were young people.
“To my mind this is a crime that has gone unpunished.”
Bombing masterminds Bosch died in 2011 at 85, and Posada Carriles at 91 when he died last year in the US.
Posada Carville died on May 23, Williams-Jewell said, “the day that my sister Jacqueline would have turned 60. In my view, the families and nations of the deceased are owed an apology to this day”.
