Cuba continues to refuse travel permit to Argentina for dissident

Monday, December 20, 2004

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cuba continues to refuse to allow a prominent dissident to travel to Argentina to visit her family, she said Saturday.

"I believe it was very positive that they informed us, and also very sad to know that I will not see my little grandchildren now," Hilda Molina told AFP by telephone.

Molina, 61, a neurosurgeon, has campaigned for 10 years to try to get permission to travel to Argentina to see her son, Roberto Quinones, two grandchildren she has never met and other members of her family. 

Molina, who is renowned as a pioneer in the transplant of fetal stem cells into the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease, ran afoul of President Fidel Castro's Communist regime in 1994 when she raised ethical concerns about the process.

Facing persecution for her beliefs, she renounced her Communist Party membership and joined a dissident doctors' group.

Molina and her mother, Hilda Morejon, had entered the Argentine embassy Thursday, triggering speculation the women were trying to seek asylum in Argentina, but both later left. She denied they were trying to seek asylum.

In Buenos Aires, Quinones said he would be willing to travel to a third country acceptable to Cuba to meet his mother there if Havana would give her a visa.

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