(EFE).- Groups that protect Cuban doctors who have fled the island made public this Friday a petition to the international community in favor of more than 5,000 minors forcibly separated from their parents, as a result of the so-called “law of the eight years” of the Government of the Caribbean island.
“Let’s put an end to the slavery of Cuban medical missions,” Javier Larrondo, president of the Prisoners Defenders organization, demanded during a teleconference in Miami (USA) in which he asked to end the “forced separation imposed by the Cuban government.”
Larrondo recalled that Cuban law imposes an eight-year bar on entry to the country for officials, including doctors, who decide not to return to the island after serving “ missions” abroad.
Those who do not return, the government on the island considers them “deserters” and prohibits their children and spouses from leaving for the time established by law.
Medical missions consist of sending health professionals to countries that request it from the Cuban Government. Over the years, more than 40,000 professionals have carried out missions in 164 countries in Africa, America, the Middle East and Asia.
“And they are forced to return to Cuba or lose everything,” Javier Larrondo emphasized about the doctors who do not return to the island.
The president of Prisoners Defenders pointed out that Cuban doctors in foreign missions, whose passports and professional titles are withheld, work in “slave conditions” and receive only between 5 and 20% of what foreign governments and institutions pay for their services to the Cuban Government.
He recalled, by way of example, that the Government of Mexico He paid each of these doctors $400, but they paid Cuba almost $11,000.
“And they are forced to return to Cuba or lose everything,” emphasized Larrondo, whose organization together with Outreach Aid to the Americas (OAA) have raised this to international bodies, including the UN.
Precisely on May 6, it was explained today, the complainants held a one-hour meeting with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, where they filed a complaint in November to expose the situations of “mistreatment, torture and consequences that this represents for more than 5,000 children who currently suffer”.
At that meeting they presented a study that revealed 191 testimonies of “mother-child separation”, in most cases made up of health professionals and that 76% were declared deserters based on the 8-year law.
They pointed out that children between 1 and 5 years old make up the majority of this sample, and that 70% of minors, in general, suffer emotional consequences due to family separation.
The families of stateless Cuban doctors suffer persecution on the Island by State Security
Larrondo highlighted the step taken by the committee, which after that meeting has recriminated and asked Cuba to withdraw this legislation from its new Penal Code and to paralyze this “forced family separation.”
“The governments of Europe already know it, the Parliament of Europe knows it, in the United Nations, rapporteurships and committees know what is happening. It is time to take a structural step commanded by the United Nations and the countries to put an end to this barbarism” , he stressed.
He added that stateless Cuban doctors are persecuted and need to be welcomed where they are and their families have the right to family reunification.
During the presentation, foreign health professionals who are members of the Free Cuban Medical Guild (GMCL) offered harsh testimonies that reflect the harassment suffered by their relatives in Cuba, both on the street and in schools, and also, in Occasionally, they are followed by members of State Security.
“They usurped the childhood of our children,” said Dr. Idalma Leyva, who described the treatment of her relatives as “grim.”
Groups of Cuban doctors have filed lawsuits in the United States for this situation, including against the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), which they point to as having facilitated the “human trafficking network” and “slavery” that, in their opinion, , there was behind the “Mais Médicos” program in Brazil with Cuban professionals.
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