Madrid/There is no right to criticize Ministry of Public Health of Cubawhich in a statement posted on Facebook makes clear its consideration of the free education system: more than a citizen’s right, it is a mechanism to silence the population, it is clear from the text. In it, it is stated that the health workers who were trained on the Island and tell the bitterest side of the system “are dedicated to insulting the medicine that made them doctors. It is not criticism: it is ingratitude. It is not testimony: it is betrayal.”
He postoriginally taken from the profile of the Public Health Union in Santiago de Cuba, appears signed in the name of the Ministry and has been disseminated by different accounts on social networks, including that of Santiago television. The title is forceful: “Do not spit out the dish that formed you,” it says, heading the text in which, among other adjectives, it uses “resentful” for doctors who criticize the situation in which they carry out their work.
The publication recognizes that there is a lack of resources, the staff is tired and there are many things to improve, “but that does not erase the fact that the Cuban doctor is trained with excellence, with ethics, with vocation.” Among the reproaches, the main one is that of having emigrated, an act that he considers “legitimate,” with a but. “Using your freedom to spit on what formed you is miserable,” the text blurts out, a phrase particularly striking because it implies that only in exile is that freedom achieved.
“Not all those who stay are accomplices. Not all those who leave are brave”
“Not all those who stay are accomplices. Not all those who leave are brave,” adds the message, which also regrets the accusation that weighs on the Cuban State of enslaving doctors on an international mission based on these testimonies, although it does not do so clearly, but rather with hints.
Furthermore, he insists that those who speak against “Cuban medicine” – which they say “does not need propaganda” – “denigrate” it. “What gave you the tools to be who you are is not destroyed. It is honored. It is transformed. But it is not trampled,” adds the text, which closes with: “Cuban medicine is a lighthouse. And the lighthouses are not extinguished by the poison of those who forgot where they come from.”
The publication of this message occurs without an apparent reason to justify the unexpected attack, although doctors who decide to abandon missions have been reviled for decades by official discourse. Not in vain, criminal actions are planned for all of them that can lead to prison sentences of up to eight years or a ban on returning to the country.
Cuban doctors who have worked abroad have been denouncing the practices of the Cuban regime for years, which, in addition to keeping amounts that can reach 90% of their salary, confiscates their passports in order to prevent their escape, prevents them from interacting with residents in the place of destination or forces them to make propaganda favorable to the Government. All this added to increasingly complex economic conditions, as they have tried to deposit the dollars that were owed to them on a Classic card instead of giving them the foreign currency in cash, as they expected.
Due to these practices, the US Government has considered for years that Cuba enslaves its doctors and, in recent months, the Donald Trump Administration has pressured several countries to modify the agreements with Havana, trying to hire professionals directly, something that has already been achieved with the Bahamas, Grenada and Jamaica.
