Cuba demands expulsion of canoeist from Olympic refugee team

Cuba's Olympic Committee on Tuesday demanded the expulsion of citizen Fernando Jorge, a champion sprint canoeist, from the refugee team taking part in the Paris Olympics.

Jorge, who fled the communist-run island two years ago to the United States, won a gold medal in Toyko in 2020 for Cuba.

He is one of two Cubans on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) refugee team, which has included citizens from the nation for the first time since it first competed in Rio in 2016.

The COC in a statement published in local media demanded "the immediate expulsion of the aforementioned athlete from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games."

According to the statement, Jorge, 25, violated "the rules that govern the International Olympic Movement" by making "disrespectful and false political statements against his country, his people and the sports movement that allowed him to be Olympic champion in Tokyo-2020."

The COC also denounced the decision to include Cubans on the refugee team, even though the IOC recognizes "that none of these athletes ... are uprooted by war or persecuted."

"This confirms Cuba's concerns about the true political motivation of the inclusion of athletes of Cuban origin" in the refugee team, said the statement.

The COC said the goal was "to attack the image of the Cuban sports movement."

The Olympic refugee team includes 36 athletes from 12 countries. The other Cuban citizen is weightlifter Ramiro Mora, who is based in Great Britain.

Cuba's bleak economic circumstances have pushed some five percent of the population to flee in recent years, many to the United States.

In a recent interview with AFP in Florida, where he is training, Jorge described how he "defected" during a training camp in Mexico City in March 2022.

He sneaked across the border with the United States with a colleague after a 15-day ordeal in which they tried hard to go unnoticed and avoid getting kidnapped for ransom.

When trying to cross the dangerous Rio Grande, he heard the screams of a woman in distress and leaped in to save her.

"I told her, 'come on, we're going to make it,'" he recalled.

Despite his heroic actions and Olympic gold, he was treated like anyone else who entered the country without papers.

However, his asylum request has since been granted and after a long wait, he was accepted on the Refugee Olympic Team.

"I was bursting with happiness," Jorge said. "I am going to represent that flag with so much pride."