Family to visit Cuban dissident

Thursday, January 13, 2005

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AFP): A Cuban dissident will be able to visit two grandchildren she has never met, although Cuba continues to refuse her an exit visa, her son said Tuesday.

The son of dissident Hilda Molina, Roberto Quinones, said his wife and two children would travel from Buenos Aires to Cuba in May to celebrate Molina's birthday and that of their youngest child. The three have Argentine citizenship.

Quinones said he would not accompany them because he had not received adequate guarantees from Havana, but would continue to push for his mother's right to travel.

Molina, 61, a neurosurgeon, has campaigned for 10 years for permission to travel to Argentina to see her son, her two grandchildren 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's case has provoked a diplomatic crisis between Havana and the government in Buenos Aires, which supports her right to travel.

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