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The medical profession of Cuba is a source of pride for the communist world. It has been deployed around the world for decades to help people in troubled and poor countries.
But do not say that to Dr. Orazal Sanchez, who spent much of his professional life in this brigade and became disillusioned with what he saw as a system of oppression that weighs heavily on the Ideology and false solidarity with the host countries.
It was during an badignment in the Kalahari Desert, Botswana, that he finally resigned after getting fed up with harsh rules, such as the requirement to surrender his pbadport and encouraging supervisors to inform colleagues.
And even after leaving the medical profession, he still felt oppressed by the Cuban government, which prevented him from returning home and refused to give him his certifications, which required him to start his career again.
"What is sad is that we are still slaves, we think we are free, but as long as we have family in Cuba, we continue to work for the system," said Sanchez, 40 years, endocrinologist.
Lucrative program
Sanchez and two other former program doctors who used pseudonyms to talk to AFP shared similar concerns about the body, one of the flagship initiatives of the revolution led by the late Fidel Castro since its inception in 1963 .
Today it is one of the most lucrative programs of the Cuban government. It brought in $ 11 billion in revenue between 2011 and 2015.
By the end of 2018, 34,000 professionals were working for the body in 66 countries.
Last month, a rights group called Cuban Prisoners Prenders and a political group, the Cuban Patriotic Union, filed a lawsuit against the program before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ICC case includes public testimony from 64 program physicians and 46 others who spoke privately.
The complaint, in which the three doctors who spoke to AFP are plaintiffs, accuses former president Raul Castro and current president Miguel Diaz-Canel of crimes against humanity for have run a program that is a form of modern slavery.
Medical staff who refuse to join a mission abroad is suffering terrible consequences for his career, the doctors said.
Meanwhile, Havana considers members of the body who leave the program as traitors and uses the threat of retaliation against relatives as a form of long-range torture.
Delia Estelles, 37, said she had been a victim of badual harbadment in Guatemala, subjected to forced political indoctrination and forced to pay money to the Cuban Communist Party, while hardly surviving because of her high salary. low. countries pay for doctors is collected by the Cuban government.
Weekly target
Estelles has been a refugee in an American program today called Cuban Medical Professional Speech.
She was admitted to the United States under this program, but was unable to take her family, who stays in Cuba, where shortages of basic necessities are common.
"I send them everything, even deodorant and soap," she said.
Yolanda Garcia served in Venezuela, where she stated that Havana's influence was so profound that "Cubans control everything".
Garcia said she was encouraged to manipulate statistics and documents, by inventing names and identification numbers so that the army corps achieved its weekly target regarding the number of patients treated.
But she was dismayed after being asked to throw away the drugs brought from Cuba, where they were scarce, so that the stocks matched the fictitious figures of the treatments.
After the deployment of Garcia in Brazil with 8,000 other doctors, Cuba canceled the program following the rise of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro had demanded new conditions for Cubans, including that their families be allowed to join them in Brazil and that they receive all the money that his government pays them.
Garcia decided to stay in Brazil rather than return to Cuba, with which she had become increasingly disillusioned.
"I can not believe that all this money goes to these missions and the country is like that," she said. "The last time I went there, I could not even find eggs."
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