Díaz-Canel calls the US report an “outrageous maneuver of war” against medical collaboration
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 25 June 2024 — On Tuesday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel described as “manipulative” the report prepared by the United States that keeps the island among the countries that do not comply with the minimum standards to fight human trafficking.
The U.S. report points mainly in the Cuban case to the so-called international missions of Havana, which for decades has sent thousands of professionals – mainly doctors – to dozens of countries.
“The empire has once again listed Cuba in its manipulative report on human trafficking. Outrageous maneuver of the open war against Cuban medical collaboration. Enough of this cynicism,” Diaz-Canel wrote on social networks.
He added that the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, “is well aware of our policy of zero tolerance for this criminal practice.”
The United States considers Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to be among the countries with the highest levels of human trafficking because they do not meet the minimum standards for its elimination and do not make significant efforts in this regard.
This is reflected in the Trafficking in Persons Report 2024 (TIP Report) released Monday by the State Department, which divides countries according to their degrees of human trafficking and places the above-mentioned countries, which were already at the most severe level a year earlier.
In this regard, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez also commented on social networks that “Cuba maintains a zero tolerance policy against human trafficking.”
“The inclusion of our country in unilateral and arbitrary reports by the U.S. government, only seeks to maintain and justify its criminal policy of economic asphyxiation against the Cuban people,” the foreign minister said.
The report calls on Cuba to ensure that “government-sponsored labor export programs comply with international labor standards, specifically that participants receive fair wages that are paid in full into bank accounts that workers can control.”
The US State Department considers that the missions of Cuban doctors abroad are “an indisputable case of forced labor.” That is why it keeps Cuba on its “blacklist” of countries that do not comply with the minimum standards for combating human trafficking.
The Cuban government considers “totally legitimate” the medical collaboration program that the island maintains in several countries and criticizes Washington for “committing a crime by trying to deny or hinder it for political reasons.”
Thousands of Cuban professionals have participated during the latter decades in missions in hundreds of countries. According to some estimates, they have become one of Cuba’s main sources of foreign exchange.
Translated by Hombre de Paz
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