MIAMI, United States.- The NGOs Prisoners Defenders, Outreach Aid to the Americas and the International Foundation for Freedom (FIL) denounced in Mexico the conditions of slavery in which Cuban doctors work, in relation to the recent announcement by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to hire 500 health professionals from the island, reported the agency of EFE news.
The agreement of the Mexican government with the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, which was released after AMLO’s visit to the island as part of a five-day tour of Central America, has sparked controversy in the Aztec nation, among others. reasons because the Mexican president assured that in his country there are not enough doctors.
The denunciation of these organizations was based, reads the EFE note, on a report presented against the Cuban government last January before the United Nations, in which Havana is accused of subjecting its health specialists to conditions of slavery and forced labor in so-called internationalist missions.
The report collects more than a thousand testimonies from Cuban victims of these mechanisms of modern slavery and forced labor.
Meanwhile, the complaint filed in Mexico recalled that Cuban medical missions are the largest source of foreign exchange for the regime on the island. “That is where Cuba’s economic power lies, in slavery,” said Javier Larrondo, president of Prisoners Defenders.
The demand of the NGOs ensures that the Cuban government receives higher income from the sale of medical services than it receives from tourism services, at least since 2005.
In 2018, the missions accounted for an income of some 8,500 million dollars (7,492 million euros), compared to 2,900 million dollars (2,556 million euros) from tourism, the document adds.
The organizations that filed the lawsuit also criticized the so-called “Eight-Year Law,” with which the Havana government sanctions professionals who leave the missions or do not return to the island when they finish their jobs.
Doctors are prohibited from returning to Cuba for eight years, as they are considered “inadmissible” in the country, according to Law 1312 on Migration (art. 24.1.e).
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