Human Trafficking Awareness Day, the Obama White House, and politicizing human trafficking reports

Setting the record straight

The White House seeking to placate despots politicized the State Dept's trafficking report

 The Obama White House politicized the Trafficking in Persons Report of the State Department, undermining the credibility of the report, and months later on January 12, 2017 shut the door on Cuban refugees and migrants in third countries, victims of trafficking, for the Administration's political agenda.

This was part of an overall pattern, that began years earlier, of paying lip service to human rights but in practice marginalizing them to advance other interests.

President Obama closed the door on Cuban trafficking victims to appease Raul Castro

On July 27, 2015 reports appeared  that the U.S. State Department upgraded Cuba's status after 12 years from tier 3 to tier 2 in its Trafficking in Persons Report. Melysa Sperber, director of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST) expressed concern:

“We are very surprised by this year’s report, which seems to be making blatantly political decisions that we consider will have a really detrimental impact on both the integrity of the report and progress in the global fight to end modern slavery."

Kimberly A. McCabe in her book "The Trafficking of Persons: National and International Responses" wrote the following on Cuba and human trafficking:

"Cuba is a source country for women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced child labor and has been identified as a destination for sex tourism. Cuban adults and children are also trafficked for forced labor in commercial agriculture, such as tobacco farming. There are also reported cases of Cubans being trafficked to the United States for debt bondage. Cuba's thriving sex trade caters to thousands of tourists every year from Europe, Latin America, and North America and involves not only the young boys and girls who are victims of abuse but also the state-run hotel workers, cab drivers, and police officers who may identify the commercial sex areas for those interested in participating in sexual exploitation. There appears to be little in terms of governmental help or nongovernmental organization initiatives to end human trafficking, especially sex trafficking, in Cuba. Again because of the closed nature of the government, the prevalence of human trafficking is unknown."

According to Reuters on August 4, 2015, in the Special Report: State Department watered down human trafficking report by Jason Szep and Matt Spetalnick, it is even worse than initially imagined:

In the weeks leading up to a critical annual U.S. report on human trafficking that publicly shames the world’s worst offenders, human rights experts at the State Department concluded that trafficking conditions hadn’t improved in Malaysia and Cuba. And in China, they found, things had grown worse. 

The State Department’s senior political staff saw it differently — and they prevailed.
A Reuters examination, based on interviews with more than a dozen sources in Washington and foreign capitals, shows that the government office set up to independently grade global efforts to fight human trafficking was repeatedly overruled by senior American diplomats and pressured into inflating assessments of 14 strategically important countries in this year’s Trafficking in Persons report.
In all, analysts in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons - or J/TIP, as it’s known within the U.S. government — disagreed with U.S. diplomatic bureaus on ratings for 17 countries, the sources said. 

The analysts, who are specialists in assessing efforts to combat modern slavery - such as the illegal trade in humans for forced labor or prostitution - won only three of those disputes, the worst ratio in the 15-year history of the unit, according to the sources.
As a result, not only Malaysia, Cuba and China, but countries such as India, Uzbekistan and Mexico, wound up with better grades than the State Department’s human-rights experts wanted to give them, the sources said.

Senator Robert Menendez (D) of New Jersey gave a speech in October of 2015 on the Senate Floor concerning the trajectory of Cuba engagement policy that critiqued the White House's approach explaining that “in executing this new policy, the Obama Administration has spared no generosity towards the dictatorship in Cuba. ..." It upgraded Cuba in the trafficking-in-persons report despite its continued slave labor and human trafficking practices."

Yuriniesky Martínez with his dad, son, and on (right) how he was found in 2015

The Obama State Department's last TIP report (2016) despite trying to minimize the Cuban governments involvement in human trafficking affirmed that "Cuba is a source and destination country for adults and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Child sex trafficking and child sex tourism occur within Cuba." Furthermore reported on how the Castro regime "uses some high school students in rural areas to harvest crops and does not pay them for their work but claims this work is not coerced."

Not mentioned in either the 2015 or 2016 TIP reports are the killings of fleeing refugees in December of 2014 and April of 2015. On December 16, 2014 the Cuban coastguard ram and sank a boat with 32 refugees, one of them, Diosbel Díaz Bioto, was killed. Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. A group of young men were building a boat near Menéndez beach to flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and were shot at.

The 2016 report downplays the claims made by Cuban doctors that "Cuban officials force or coerce participation in the program" by giving credence to the Cuban government's claim that "the program is voluntary and well paid compared to jobs within Cuba."

Cuban doctors trafficked and exploited by the Castro regime in a $2.3 billion business

Consider that the regime in Cuba, according to sources friendly to the Castro dictatorship place the number of Cuban doctors sent on "international mission"at 31,000. Other Cubans, also working in "slave-like conditions" have been sent abroad to work and provide hard currency for the communist government. In 2008 The Miami Herald reported that "more than 31,000 Cuban health workers -- most of them doctors -- who toil in 71 countries brought in $2.3 billion last year, ..., more than any other industry, including tourism."

Months after President Obama ended the program that offered refuge in the United States to Cuban doctors in third countries, who could reach a U.S. embassy, to placate the Castro regime The New York Times offered a different view. On September 29, 2017 in an article titled "Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’" with an introductory paragraph that indicted the Castro regime and reflected internal dissent among medical professionals the Obama Cuba legacy is forever tainted.

"In a rare act of collective defiance, scores of Cuban doctors working overseas to make money for their families and their country are suing to break ranks with the Cuban government, demanding to be released from what one judge called a “form of slave labor.” Thousands of Cuban doctors work abroad under contracts with the Cuban authorities. Countries like Brazil pay the island’s Communist government millions of dollars every month to provide the medical services, effectively making the doctors Cuba’s most valuable export."

Closing the door on thousands of Cuban medical doctors and dooming them to be exploited by a military dictatorship, where regime elites get billions of dollars, was a decision taken by the outgoing Obama Administration on January 12, 2017. It is important to set the record straight on Human Trafficking Awareness Day and on the eve of this lamentable anniversary.

Closing the door on the victims of communism in Cuba

Remembering some of the victims of Cuban communism: Yuriniesky Martínez Reina

"Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world." - Mishnah  (1135-1204)

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina, shot in the back and killed by state security

Some psychologists argue that as the number of victims increase into the hundreds, and thousands that compassion collapses out of the human fear of being overwhelmed. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin put it more succinctly: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." In the case of Cuba the communist regime has killed tens of thousands, and many have become numb in the face of this horror. Therefore on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first communist regime in Russia, that caused so much harm around the world, will focus on the small corner of Cuba and on an infinitesimal sampling of some of the victims of Cuban communism. 

The eighth entry focuses on a young men shot in the back and killed by a state security agent. His "crime"? Building a boat with other friends to flee the Castro dictatorship and live in freedom.

Previous entries in this series were about Cubans trying to change the system nonviolently. The first entry concerned Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a humble bricklayer turned courageous human rights defender who paid the ultimate price in 2010 for speaking truth to power.  The second entry focused on Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, a Catholic lay activist, nonviolence icon, husband, father of three and the founder of a Cuban opposition movement that shook up the Castro regime with a petition drive demanding that human rights be respected and recognized in Cuba. This action and speaking truth to power led to his extrajudicial killing in 2012. The third entry focused on one of the great crimes of the Castro regime that has been well documented by international human rights organizations and reported on ABC News Nightline that claimed the lives of 37 men, women, and children. They were trying to flee the despotism in Cuba to live in freedom and were extrajudicially executed. In the fourth focused on an act of state terrorism when two planes were shot down on a Saturday afternoon at 3:21 and 3:27 on February 24, 1996 over international airspace while engaged in a search and rescue flight for Cuban rafters killing four humanitarians. Their planes were destroyed by air-to-air missiles fired by a Cuban MiG-29 aircraft on the orders of Raul and Fidel Castro.  

In the fifth focused on Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Wilman Villar Mendoza who died on hunger strike protesting his unjust imprisonment on January 19, 2012 at the age of 31 left behind two little girls, a young wife and grieving mother. The sixth entry focused on one of the many non-Cuban victims of Cuban communism. Joachim Løvschall was studying Spanish in Havana in the spring of 1997. He was gunned down by a soldier of the Castro regime in Havana, Cuba twenty years ago. The identity of the soldier was never revealed to Joachim's family. No one was ever brought to justice.  The seventh entry focused on a young woman, Yunisledy Lopez Rodriguez, who tried to warn a friend who was being targeted by the secret police for a violent end. They went to the authorities to make a formal complaint, but nothing happened. Four months later she was murdered in front of her two children stabbed 18 times. Eight months later her friend was the victim of a brutal machete attack and nearly killed. Yunisledy was just 23 years old.

Yuriniesky Martínez with his dad, son, and on (right) how he was found

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. A group of young men were building a small boat near Menéndez beach to flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and were shot at by state security. Yuriniesky was left for two days in the lagoon, before being found by his brother. Unlike the families of many other victims who are intimidated into silence, Yuriniesky's family spoke out, identified his killer and demanded justice in a video published on April 27, 2015 by Libertad Press.

The extrajudicial killing of fleeing refugees has been an ongoing practice of the Castro dictatorship in Cuba for decades. Well documented cases, prior to this one, included a formal complaint in 1993 by the United States government when snipers, sand bags, and gaff hooks, were used by Cuban officials on fleeing Cuban refugees.

Regional human rights group calls attention to detentions/deportations of Cubans in Ecuador

Cubans arbitrarily detained in Ecuador and deported back to Cuba.

39 detained Cubans filed for an appeal, but unclear whether it'll be respected. (Actualidad Radio)

IACHR Expresses Concern Regarding Detentions and Deportations of Cuban Migrants in Ecuador

July 26, 2016

Washington, D.C. — The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expresses its concern regarding the alleged eviction and arbitrary detention of nearly 150 people in Ecuador, as well as the alleged deportation of 121 Cuban migrants. The IACHR calls on the Ecuadorian State to adopt any measures that may be necessary to guarantee that all rights of migrant persons are respected, in particular their right to liberty, personal integrity, due process, and judicial protection, the right to seek and receive asylum, the principle of non-refoulement, and the right to family unity.

According to publicly available information, on July 6, 2016, the National Police of Ecuador, as part of a migration control operation, cleared out a camp that had been set up in Parque El Arbolito, in Quito. The eviction was reportedly carried out without warning, and a number of individuals said that they had been victims of acts of physical and psychological aggression and that their belongings had been confiscated. As a result of this operation, nearly 150 people—including children, adolescents, pregnant women, and elderly adults—reportedly were detained and transferred to a prison facility and an immigration detention center.

In addition, according to publicly available information, deportation hearings were held on July 7 and 8 at a court for minor offenses and juvenile offenders in Pichincha (Unidad Judicial de Garantías Penales, Contravenciones y Menores Infractores). According to Ecuador’s Interior Ministry, “of the first group of citizens of Cuban origin who attended the hearings, eight were released because they were part of a family unit, in other words, because they have Ecuadorian children. However, they should fix their immigration situation in order to obtain legal status in the country. Twenty-two individuals were released because they provided justification for their lawful stay in Ecuador.” A number of sources indicate that deportations of asylum seekers and refugees had been ordered. In addition, the Ombudsman’s Office of Ecuador expressed concern over the submission of such judicial decisions regarding deportations to a new, administrative jurisdiction, a situation that contravenes the principle of judicial independence.

According to information from the Ministry of the Interior, on July 9 the first group of 29 Cuban migrants were deported; on July 11 another 46 migrants were deported; and on July 13 a third group, for a total of 121 Cubans deported. According to publicly available information, the deportees were not properly notified of their deportation orders, and the time frames available to appeal these decisions had not been respected.

In keeping with its international human rights obligations, the Ecuadorian State should adopt all measures that may be necessary to ensure that racial profiling is not applied in the context of migration control operations. The State has a general obligation to respect all rights of migrant persons, including their right to live free of discrimination and free of all forms of violence and their right to personal integrity, personal liberty, family unity, and property.

The Commission observes with concern that the information it has suggests that the Ecuadorian State has made use of automatic immigration detention without first resorting to alternative measures. In that regard, the Commission calls to mind that immigration detention must be an exceptional measure, used only as a last resort and for the shortest period of time possible. In addition, when migrant persons are detained, States should adopt the necessary measures so that those who are detained have sufficient information regarding the nature of their detention, the reasons for it, the procedural guarantees or safeguards to which they are entitled, and the remedies available to appeal or challenge their detention. Moreover, States may not resort to immigration detention of children and their parents as a precautionary measure to protect the goals of an immigration process or procedures to determine refugee status.

The IACHR reiterates that, in keeping with international norms and standards, immigrants subject to proceedings that could lead to deportation must be afforded minimum guarantees. These include: (i) the right to be heard by the relevant authority in the context of the deportation proceeding and to have sufficient opportunity to exercise their right to a defense; (ii) the right to interpretation and translation; (iii) the right to have legal representation; (iv) the right to consular protection from the moment of detention; (v) the right to receive notification of a deportation order; (vi) access to an effective remedy to appeal a deportation decision; (vii) the right to appeal a deportation decision; and (viii) the right to suspension of deportation while the matter is under appeal.

The Commission calls to mind that the Ecuadorian State has the obligation to analyze, establish a basis for, and decide individually on each deportation that is carried out. At the same time, the Commission reiterates that the State has the obligation to respect the principle of non-refoulement and therefore not to deport to another country, whether or not it is the person’s country of origin, any foreigner whose rights to life, personal integrity, or personal liberty may be at risk of being violated. The principle of non-refoulement is the fundamental standard of protection of asylum seekers and refugees.     

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this area. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in an individual capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or residence.

No. 102/16

En Español 

World War III, Syrian Refugees and Prudence

"Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all." - Edmund Burke

Christians are being targeted for genocide but U.S. State Department silent

Pope Francis on September 13, 2014 declared that World War III was already underway and that it was "one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction." His Holiness also declared the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris a part of this war.

The United States is already engaged in this war with troops on the ground in Syria that predate the November 13th attacks and that will now be intensified. Patrick J. Buchanan in an important column outlines what has been going on in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS):

The President’s strategy is to contain, degrade and defeat ISIS. While no one has provided the troops to defeat ISIS, the U.S. is using Kurdish and Yazidi forces, backed by U.S. air power, to degrade it. And recent months have seen measured success. The Kurds have run ISIS out of Kobani, captured much of the Turkish-Syrian border, and moved to within 30 miles of Raqqa, the ISIS capital. Yazidis and Kurds last week recaptured Sinjar in Iraq and cut the highway between Mosul and Raqqa. The terrorist attacks in Paris, the downing of the Russian airliner in Sinai, the ISIS bomb that exploded in the Shiite sector of Beirut, are ISIS’s payback. But they could also be signs that the ISIS caliphate, imperiled in its base, is growing desperate and lashing out.

Now there is a debate raging in the United States concerning what to do about Syrian refugees fleeing from the Islamic State. This requires both courage, prudence and a recognition of the realities on the ground over there and over here.

First, the United States does not have its borders under control and terrorist cells are probably already in the United States. At the same time American intelligence services have, following the September 11, 2001 debacle, had a decent record in stopping terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Secondly, ISIS has been engaged in all out genocide against religious minorities in the territory it occupies targeting Yazidis, Christians, and Turkmen. Christians in the Middle East, especially with the start of the second Iraq war have been victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide, but this has been ignored by both the Bush and Obama administrations. This could be the end of Christianity in the Middle East and the U.S. State Department refuses to recognize this ongoing situation.

Back in April 2015, I met with the president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, Juliana Taimoorazy, and blogged about this issue which predates the Iraq war with the Armenian genocide that began a hundred years ago in 1915 that ended in 1923 targeting Christians.
 
In the 1930s the failure of Western Democracies to take in Jewish refugees highlighted in the disgraceful episode of the SS St. Louis Voyage of the Damned in 1939 sent a signal to the Nazis that they could do what they wanted with the Jewish population in Europe without any consequences.

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen are being targeted for extermination and need to be given refuge. This should be done in a prudent manner, taking safeguards, but remembering that the lesson of the Good Samaritan in the Bible calls out to us to protect and assist refugees. Father Longenecker offers the following counsel, although his scope is narrower than mine:

..."Christian charity demands that we welcome the stranger and give solace to the homeless where we are able. We are the richest and most prosperous and bountiful country in history. We can, and should make room for the homeless and those displaced by war–especially as our own involvement in the Middle East has contributed to the mess. We have meddled in the countries of the Middle East–in their politics, their economics, their wars and their military coups. We’ve propped and then toppled their dictators. We’ve invaded their countries and bombed their people. Of course we should take in their homeless refugees. On the other hand, when you see the hordes of fit young men streaming across the European borders you can’t help but suspect that these are not refugees but an invading army. Should we open the borders to just anyone? Of course not. Why can’t anyone use common sense? ... Furthermore, why not be even more selective and take only family groups with husband, wife and children or one parent and their children or family groups with extended family members like grandparents? Are there single people who need help? Accept women and their children. Accept old people. Accept the disabled, the poor and blind. In that way we offer loving Christian charity to those in need while excluding those who might be a risk."

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen should be provided refuge and measures set up to avoid taking in terrorists disguised as refugees. Senator Cruz's call to give a priority to Christian refugees entering the United States should be rooted in the recognition that they are the largest group in the area targeted for genocide. Shiite Muslims have Iran as a nearby sanctuary. At the same time it is imperative to get the borders and ports of the United States under greater control to prevent the incursion of more terrorists.

It is also important to remember that not all Christians and Yazidis are leaving, some have stayed to fight and take their last stand against ISIS. A friend of mine Jordan Allot, who made a documentary on Cuban prisoner of conscience Oscar Elías Bicet in 2010, traveled to Iraq and Syria with an Assyrian-American school teacher from New York to raise awareness about the plight of the Christian communities there and made the documentary Our Last Stand.

The threat of terrorism remains and we are in the midst of a terrible global conflict but we should not lose our humanity in confronting it or showing solidarity with its victims, but we must do so prudently in order not to compound the present evils.

Five points to consider about the Cuban Adjustment Act

"Whoever is elected leader of the empire should not ignore that Cuba demands the total removal of the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act..." - Fidel Castro, July 26, 2000

Refugees massacred by the Castro regime in 1994. Still happens in 2015

1. Cuba is subjected to a totalitarian, communist regime that systematically denies Cubans their rights, including the right to enter and exit their own country. On December 16, 2014, the Cuban coast guard rammed and sank a boat with 32 refugees, one of them, Diosbel Díaz Bioto, went missing and is presumed dead. The rest were repatriated and detained. Less than four months later, Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba, for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. The Castro regime for decades has engaged in the murder of fleeing refugees. A particularly egregious, well documented, example is the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre in which 37 men, women and children were killed.

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina, in orange, with his dad and son (L). Shot in the back (R)

2. The Castro regime and its agents of influence have been and continue to demand the repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) claiming that it is this law and not the repressive nature of the regime that provokes massive immigration. The dictatorship denounces it claiming that "from the very beginning, the Cuban Adjustment Act reflected a discriminatory and immoral stance against the Cuban people."

3. Ending the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) will assist the Castro regime in maintaining control of an enslaved population. Not only in Cuba, but also in third countries where they are sent in slave-like conditions to work for the Castro regime in order to profit the Castro family and a tight nucleus of elites in the military and intelligence apparatus. The New York Times echoes the complaint of the Castro regime, protesting policies that allow Cuban doctors working under inhuman conditions to get to the United States.  In 2008 The Miami Herald reported that "more than 31,000 Cuban health workers -- most of them doctors -- who toil in 71 countries brought in $2.3 billion last year, ..., more than any other industry, including tourism. Most of them are paid $150 to $375 a month, a small percentage of the cash or trade benefits the Cuban government pockets in exchange for theirwork."

Cuban health care workers sent abroad in slave-like conditions

 4. Since 2000 there has been large scale trade between American companies and the Castro regime. The Castro regime used openings in trade from the Clinton era (medical products in 1992 and agricultural products in 2000)  to build up a pro-Castro lobby and to target congressional districts in agricultural states to advance its interests. The dictatorship accomplished this by purchasing American exports and requiring U.S. corporations and members of Congress to sign "advocacy contracts" that turned them into lobbyists for the dictatorship as a condition of the Castro regime buying their goods. Trade between these companies and the Castro regime reached their peak in 2008 totaling five billion dollars by 2015 but trade levels crashed during the Obama administration.  The dictatorship is demanding an end to the trade embargo (opening up credits that would leave American taxpayers holding the bag) and an end to the Cuban Adjustment Act.  Two of the Republicans pushing for the end of the Cuban Adjustment Act, Walter Jones of North Carolina and Ted Poe of Texas are also advocates of ending the embargo on the Castro regime and providing those doing business with the dictatorship export financing credits.

Cuban rafters fleeing a repressive totalitarian regime

5. Cubans, despite the rhetoric, do not have a special privilege but rather special circumstances that led to the Cuban Adjustment Act that unfortunately are not historically unique. The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act  was not the first such measure, the Hungarian Escape Act of 1958 granted Hungarians refugee status predates it by eight years. Nor was it the last, the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act of 1975 granted refugees from the conflict in South East Asia special status. The United States has had an immigration policy favoring those leaving communist states.

Conclusion:  Cubans are fleeing the Castro regime because it is a communist, totalitarian dictatorship that systematically denies their human rights. The Cuban dictatorship has had a long term policy goal of repealing the Cuban Adjustment Act and the ability of Cubans working for them under slave-like conditions to flee to freedom in the United States. Unfortunately, ending the Cuban Adjustment Act will complement the Obama Administration's policy of normalizing relations with the communist dictatorship in Cuba at the expense of the freedom and well being of the Cuban people. This will also have the unintended effect of provoking an exodus from the island.

Hunger Strike for Human Rights in the Bahamas: Placing it in context

 The Bahamas and Cuba: 39 years of abnormal relations has led to the present crisis

Jesús Aléxis Gómez (15 days ) and Ramon Saul Sanchez (8 days) on hunger strike

The Bahamas and Cuba officially established diplomatic relations on November 30, 1974 and despite having normalized relations over the past 39 years come this November, relations are anything but normal. This is because the government in Cuba is not a normal government but a totalitarian regime and this has real consequences in the relations between states on matters such as immigration. For example, Mexico is a democracy - with problems and challenges -but the government is answerable to Mexican citizens and there are competitive elections.

Mexicans who have fled to the United States illegally are provided with assistance and counseling by the Mexican government.  The Mexican government says plainly that it is committed to seeing that Mexicans living abroad have improved quality of life. This includes offering assistance and aide to undocumented Mexicans in the United States.

Contrast the Mexican example with what the dictatorship in Cuba does to those Cubans who leave "illegally". The regime has engaged in massacres of Cuban migrants seeking a better life abroad sinking the tugboat "13 de Marzo", using sand bags, and snipers on defenseless swimmers. The Cuban government lobbies to end advantageous laws for Cuban migrants such as the Cuban Adjustment Act.

Poster at the hunger strike in Little Havana

This leads us to the situation in the Bahamas where there are credible allegations of abuse against undocumented Cuban migrants. Since the Cuban government does not represent the interests of its citizens, as Mexico and many other countries do, at has fallen on the Cuban diaspora to stand up for undocumented Cubans suffering abuse in Bahamian detention.

The mistreatment of  undocumented migrants in the prisons of the Bahamas is not only limited to Cubans and Amnesty International has ample documentation on what goes on there. Fifteen days ago Jesús Aléxis Gómez, outraged at the ill treatment of these Cuban refugees, initiated a hunger strike and eight days ago following a failure in negotiations with the Bahamian consulate Ramon Saul Sanchez joined the hunger strike.


Initially the hunger strike was held in downtown Miami at the Torch of Friendship, but this past week it was moved to Little Havana to Calle Ocho and 13th Avenue at the monument to Bay of Pigs Veterans.

The failure of the Cuban government to protect its citizens who are being mistreated in the Bahamas is just another example how normalizing relations with a totalitarian dictatorship leads to all sorts of abnormalities.

Meanwhile on a side street from Calle Ocho in Little Havana two courageous men put their lives on the line in defense of their fellow country men. They are mobilizing public opinion in Miami and the press is increasing its coverage of their plight, as the days go by and the risk to their health increases. Let us pray that a just agreement can be reached before it is too late.

Hunger strike and boycott demanding Cubans held in the Bahamas be treated decently

Jesus Alexis Gomez has been on hunger strike since July 19, 2013 and was joined on Friday July 26, 2013 by Ramon Saul Sanchez after Bahamian officials failed to follow through on a verbal agreement by placing it in writing. There is an online petition directed at the United Nations and also a campaign underway to boycott the Bahamas. Below is an essay by Rosa María Payá Acevedo that outlines what is being done to Cubans under custody of the Bahamian authorities. 

Ramon Saul Sanchez (Left) and Jesus Alexis Gomez (Right)

Categories of Human Beings
By Rosa María Payá

Where are the documentaries about the Bahamian concentration camps where there are school-age children and women with their lips sewn shut?

It has been a few weeks since South Florida’s media and social networks have been denouncing the systematic abuses to which refugees from Cuba and other nations are subjected in the Bahamas. The trigger was a series of clandestinely made cellphone videos that showed officers kicking people and subjecting them to different tortures. Those who made the videos public assure these were taken in the refugee detention camps in Nassau, and even when people have recognized their friends and relatives in the videos, the Bahamian Chancellery has denied that these are authentic.

These detention centers seem to be the scene of systematic human rights violations, but they are not a new phenomenon. The oldest data I know of refers to the New York Times of August, 1963, which discusses the intervention of Cuban air and naval forces in the former British island during which 19 refugees were kidnapped and taken back to Cuba. But even more astonishing is the reaction of the international community before a situation that has been taking place for years, and for which there are not many echoes beyond the modest ones from the voices of Cubans and Cuban Americans.

In the past 20 years, there is no trace of these events in two of the most important American newspapers, even when the Interamerican Human Rights Commission (IACHR) has issued reports thereon from allegations dating from 1998. For its part, the Spanish newspaper El País lists the names of the two Caribbean islands when it comes to hurricanes while other Iberian newspapers only mention them to highlight the progress of the oil drilling carried out in collaboration with Cuba.

The reaction is different when it comes to the equally unjust humiliations suffered by the prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo. The acts of condemnation in this case reach high political dimensions including the Human Rights Commission of the Russian Chancellery, the Swiss President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations, the American Catholic Church, some leftist French party and thousands, perhaps millions of people from around the word who are in favor of the closing of this prison in the easternmost end of Cuba.

However, curiously enough, in that very end of my country the Provincial Prison of Guantánamo, run by Cuban authorities, is known for its inhumane treatment, the lack of hygiene, a poor diet and occasional beatings to which the people who are surviving there are subjected to. Most of the country’s prisons are run in similar conditions.

It would seem as if the men in orange uniforms held at the naval base belonged to a different category from that of the non-uniformed emigrants of the Caribbean. One hypothesis could be that the people of the Middle East evoke greater sympathy or compassion than the Caribbean people, but since it is precisely in that region where countless human rights violations have been committed in the past and continue to be committed to this day by the authorities of those countries, and the international condemnation has historically suffered its ups and downs, this argument doesn’t hold water. It would be scandalous if the level of the scandal was related to the category of the oppressors.

It is not the US Marines who are torturing Cubans and Haitians in the Bahamas; it is not “the Yankee empire” against “the oppressed people of the world.” Therefore, the perception is that the abuses committed by the authorities of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas are less attractive to the international community.

I cannot help questioning the motivations of the forces behind these reactions. If it is not compassion for those who are suffering, a sense of justice and respect for international treaties, could it be that the level of solidarity is determined by the unpopularity of the oppressor? Doesn’t the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaim that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights? A world in which lobbies have the last say and pressure groups have more interests than convictions is scary.

Who is lobbying for our brothers whose rights are violated with the same impunity in Havana and Nassau? Where are the documentaries about the Bahamian concentration camps where there are school-age children and women with their lips sewn shut? Where is the absolute condemnation for the humiliations that these people who emigrate suffer from, which are not subjected to any accusations? Why throughout the 20 years this situation has been taking place has it not become popular among youth to favor the closure of the prison camps in the Bahamas?

Apparently, the sense of impunity is contagious, and the Bahamian officials feel they can beat Cubans in the same way in which the repressive bodies of the State Security in the Largest of the Antilles have no mercy toward opposition members. Each of them should know that impunity is not sustainable over time, and that time is running out.

Translated by Chabeli

6 July 2013