To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
PAHO must face human trafficking claims. Germany seeking access to citizen sentenced to 25 year prison term for filming Cuba protests. Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela share similar torture practices
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO) ,"must face a lawsuit by Cuban doctors accusing it of helping arrange a program in which they were compelled to work in Brazil against their will, violating human trafficking laws", decided unanimously a three-judge panel of the D.C. U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, informed Reuters yesterday.
Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) building in Washington DC.
Reuters reported that "according to the lawsuit, Cuba and Brazil used PAHO as an intermediary in order to avoid a direct agreement between the two countries which would have had to be approved by the Brazilian parliament." According to the same report "the Cuban government received 85% of the money paid by Brazil, with just 10% going to the doctors and 5% retained by PAHO as a fee. The funds passed through PAHO's U.S.-based bank account."
PAHO has been caught up in scandals involving the failure to report a viral outbreak of Zika in Cuba in 2017, and with the above case accused of human trafficking. Mary O' Grady described in her April 12, 2020 OpEd in The Wall Street Journal how PAHO was profiting off the trafficking of Cuban doctors in an arrangement with the Castro regime and called for an audit of the regional office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO) .The Yucatan Times also raided concerns from a Mexican perspective in the article "The Cuban medical brigades -A history of enslavement."
Too many believe the propaganda claims of the Castro regime, and do not mind profiting from human trafficking, but the reailty is far worse, not only for doctors, but also patients. If healthcare is so great in Cuba, why did a cancer patient risk his life windsurfing to reach the United States last week to obtain treatment for his cancer?
The New York Times reported on how Cuban doctors in Venezuela were ordered to deny or ration care to advance Nicolas Maduro's election prospects in the March 17, 2019 article, "It Is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Venezuela Voters," including the denial of needed oxygen to deathly ill patients. Worse yet, not all the Cubans dressed up as medical doctors, according to this article, were doctors, some were secret police and they were practicing medicine without a license.
This relationship between PAHO, the World Health Organization, and the Castro dictatorship has resulted in dangerous lies. The 2016 claim of the World Health Organization Bulletin that in 2015 "Cuba became the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis as public health problems." When visiting Cubans that worked in the healthcare sector were asked about these claims, they just rolled their eyes.
Meanwhile, according to Avert, an NGO that provides information on HIV worldwide, “nearly 90 percent of new infections in the Caribbean in 2017 occurred in four countries — Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.”
More contagious diseases in Cuba are also covered up.
CiberCuba reported on April 1, 2020 that the mother of a young girl with coronavirus was detained after criticizing Raul Castro and Miguel Diaz Canel for the spread of the illness. Cynically, Diaz Canel on April 9, 2020 stated that "hiding information can be woefully lethal" but the official communist daily Granma warned that reporting "false or malicious news about the coronavirus" was punishable by up to four years in prison.
Let us examine what the regime considers "false or malicious news" based on how it has applied the policy in the past.
In 1997 when dengue broke out in Cuba, the regime tried to cover it up. When a doctor spoke out, he was locked up, sentenced to 8 years in prison. Amnesty International recognized Dr. Desi Mendoza as a prisoner of conscience, and he was released from prison in 1998 under condition he leave Cuba. The dictatorship eventually recognized that there had been a dengue epidemic.
A 2012 cholera outbreak once again demonstrated how the Cuban public health system operates. News of the outbreak in Manzanillo, in the east of the island, broke in El Nuevo Herald on June 29, 2012 thanks to reporting by the outlawed independent press in the island. Official media did not confirm the outbreak until days later on July 3, 2012. BBC News reported on July 7, 2012 that a patient had been diagnosed with Cholera in Havana. The dictatorship stated that it had it under control. Independent journalist Calixto Martínez was arrested on September 16, 2012 for reporting on the Cholera outbreak, and declared an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. Cholera outbreaks would continue on the island.
The Castro regime succeeded in covering up the 2017 Zika outbreak, but eventually in 2019, due to sick foreign tourists diagnosed with the disease, it was traced back to Cuba. PAHO tried to excuse the failure in reportingas a "technical glitch." History of past outbreaks would indicate otherwise.
The lack of transparency and accountability has also been demonstrated in the current COVID-19 pandemic. This should not be a shock because secrecy, and repression are features, not bugs, in the Cuban communist system.
Germany's Foreign Ministry said on March 29, 2022 that "its diplomats are working to get access to a German citizen imprisoned in Cuba since last year," reports the Associated Press.
German citizen Luis Frómeta Compte sentenced to 25 years in prison for filming 11J protest with his camera.
Luis Frómeta Compte, a resident of Dresden who has both German and Cuban citizenship, was arrested on July 11, 2021, for filming an anti-government demonstration during a vacation in Cuba using his cell phone. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in proceedings that do not meet international legal standards.
Prisoners in Cuba are at the absolute mercy of the Cuban dictatorship. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations are not allowed to enter the country and monitor the human rights situation there. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has not had access to Cuba's prisons since 1990. By comparison, between 2002 and the present the ICRC has visited the prison at the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba over 100 times.
Cuba is not a healthcare superpower as regime apologists claim, but experts in the application of torture on prisoners with impunity and zero transparency. Worse yet, the regime in Havana has exported these practices to Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The Prague-based Casla Institute released a report that demonstrated that "the dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela share patterns of Arbitrary Detention and Torture and ignore Regional and Universal Human Rights Protection Organizations."
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