The world begins to know: Castroism and slavery

Last March, I wrote about the English trial of four Cuban doctors against the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO, for violating international laws and conventions against trafficking in human beings and forced labor. Indeed, he acts as an intermediary collection agent and administrator of a cooperative program between the Brazilian government and the Cuban Ministry of Public Health.

It is "Mais Médicos", a program implemented between 2013 and 2018. According to the allegations, the Brazilian authorities made payments for these services to the PAHO, which would then forward them to the Cuban government. PAHO reportedly charged a commission of 5% ($ 75 million), paying the salaries to the doctors, one part in hand and another part deposited in Cuba.

These are the Cuban medical missions. The accusation describes a real operating system, from pay to working conditions. Of the total transfers, only 10% were devoted to professional salaries, well below the salary of a doctor in Brazil. The remaining 85% goes to the Cuban government.

It also details a repressive regime. Participants are recruited through threats. They are not informed of the destination, the duration of the trip or the payment. They are not allowed to travel with all members of their family. They are not given their pbadports and, once there, they have to perform propaganda and political indoctrination functions. They are also accompanied by State Security agents who claim to be doctors, intelligence on one side and the other.

I have already seized my other complaint about the same problem before the International Criminal Court by the NGOs "Prisoners Defenders" and "Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU)". They accuse six senior Cuban government officials, Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel, of slavery, persecution and other inhumane acts under article 7 of the Rome Statute which defines and characterizes crimes against humanity. 'humanity.

The complaint is based on 110 testimonials from doctors who left the program. I have read the document of about 400 pages and it is as if I have already read it. The charges are almost identical to those of "Mais Médicos". A model is ratified: coercion, forced labor and exploitation. On the basis of a larger number of cases, this complaint reveals the vast geographic dimension of the missions. The professionals who have reported have traveled to dozens of countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and even Europe, a real foreign policy of the Cuban government.

The prosecution also exposes the practice of falsifying health statistics both abroad and on the island, with the aim of exaggerating the success of the missions, which has direct effects in monetary and diplomatic terms. are sent to PAHO, and then converted to information validated by the United Nations.

In Cuba, in turn, the falsification of public health information serves to replicate the myth of the medical excellence of the socialist system, the map of presentation of missions abroad. This is the case, for example, because the country has extremely low infant mortality rates, which are established through the official directive ordering the reporting of all infant deaths as abortions. first weeks of life. The doctors interviewed said that the same was true for communicable diseases such as dengue and cholera, which have been epidemic for seven years.

The title of this column, "The World Begins to Know," is a phrase uttered by Javier Larrondo, president of Prisoners Defenders, one of the plaintiff organizations, about the wide media coverage of his complaint. It is time, finally, to make known the crimes of the Castro regime. However, it must be said that the fact of not knowing is due to the ingenuity of some and the complicity of many people in the face of the myths and legends of the Cuban revolution.

You must have a minimum of honesty and recognize it: the "progressives", whatever the term defined, have consumed these legends indiscriminately and, over time, they have become accomplices. It is necessary to unravel the narrative with which a tyranny of six decades continues to conceive of its foreign policy, which is listened to and venerated, if not obeyed, by a good part of the Latin American and European left.

Think of the legend for having withstood the Cold War, a war waged in the rest of the hemisphere with tremendous brutality while Cuba was exceptionally protected, itself protected by the 1962 agreement with the Soviet Union. It is paradoxical that Salvador Allende died with the AK47 offered by Fidel Castro in his hands, a weapon he never needed to use in Cuba once he came to power.

Consider the legend of the blockade, instead of the embargo, of the invading invasion that did not occur in the end, the rights of the peoples of Latin America at the same time as the rights of the Cuban people are violated. Nor can we ignore the myth of the struggle against Yankee imperialism and its accomplices – Fascist dictatorships – that of Pinochet – while doing business with other fascist dictatorships – that of Videla – obeying the orders of another imperialism, that of Moscow.

This is the value of the denunciations of Cuban missions, they denote the hypocrisy of a regime that proclaims the emancipation of the proletariat but enslaves doctors. You can no longer claim ignorance. There is much talk of imperialism, if the rights story is authentic, it is now up to you to unmask Cuban imperialism. The world begins to know that the dictatorship of Castro must be held accountable.