Setting the record straight on human trafficking in Cuba and Saudi Arabia

Cuba downgraded status in this year’s #TIPReport because Cuban regime fails to provide trafficking victims the justice and protection they deserve.- Kimberly Breier, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs

On July 27, 2015 the Obama administration continued its drive to normalize diplomatic relations with the Castro regime by whitewashing the dictatorship's record on human trafficking. The State Department upgraded Cuba's status after 12 years from Tier 3 to Tier 2 in its Trafficking in Persons Report, but there had been no improvement. Melysa Sperber, director of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST) back in 2015 expressed both her surprise and concern that these were "blatantly political decisions" by the Kerry State Department that would "have a really detrimental impact on both the integrity of the report and progress in the global fight to end modern slavery."

Four years later on June 20, 2019, the State Department's 2019 Trafficking in Persons report is finally setting the record straight. Both Cuba and Saudi Arabia have been placed on Tier 3, the blacklist for human trafficking. They should have both been on this list for some time, and Cuba had been for many years because of its dismal record. The Pompeo State Department has restored the integrity of the report, demonstrating their commitment to end modern slavery.

2019 Trafficking in Persons Report: Cuba

June 20, 2019

CUBA: Tier 3

The Government of Cuba does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so; therefore Cuba was downgraded to Tier 3. Despite the lack of significant efforts, the government took some steps to address trafficking, including prosecuting sex traffickers and one labor trafficker and imprisoning sex tourists engaged in child sex trafficking. However, the government did not take action to address forced labor in the foreign medical mission program, despite persistent allegations Cuban officials threatened and coerced some participants to remain in the program. The government did not criminalize all forms of forced labor or sex trafficking of children ages 16 and 17. The government lacked procedures to proactively identify forced labor victims, lacked a comprehensive package of services to include housing and physical protection, and detained or charged potential sex trafficking victims for unlawful acts their traffickers coerced them to commit.

PRIORITIZED RECOMMENDATIONS

Implement policies to prohibit force, fraud, or coercion by foreign labor recruiters and state-owned or controlled enterprises, including foreign medical missions in recruiting and retaining employees. • Draft and enact a comprehensive anti-trafficking law that prohibits and prescribes significant prison terms for all forms of human trafficking, including forced labor, sex trafficking of children ages 16 and 17, and the full range of trafficking “acts” (recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring, or receiving persons).
• Vigorously investigate and prosecute both sex trafficking and forced labor offenses.
• Implement formal policies and procedures on the identification of all trafficking victims and their referral to appropriate services, and train officials, including first responders, in their use.
• Proactively identify trafficking victims, including among vulnerable populations.
• Adopt policies and programs that provide trafficking-specific, specialized assistance for male and female trafficking victims.
• Ensure participants in the foreign medical missions program retain control of their passports.
• Screen individuals charged or detained for prostitution-related offenses for sex trafficking and refer victims to care providers.
• Educate all Cuban workers about trafficking indicators and where to report trafficking-related violations.
• Establish a permanent inter-ministerial anti-trafficking committee and implement the 2017-2020 national anti-trafficking action plan in partnership with international organizations. • Provide specialized training on trafficking indicators for hotline staff and interpretation for non-Spanish speakers.

Read the full report on Cuba online here. 

The body count during the normalization of relations in Cuba

“Our Movement denounces the regime's attempt to impose a fraudulent change, i.e. change without rights and the inclusion of many interests in this change that sidesteps democracy and the sovereignty of the people of Cuba.” - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, March 30, 2012

The United States Embassy in Havana

 Cuba is much more than the dictatorship that has oppressed Cubans for 56 years, but in its official dialogue the Obama State Department by excluding Cuban democrats from the official opening of the embassy today confuses the two. Worse yet, the snub to Cuban democrats arises out of a fear that the dictatorship's apparatchiks would not attend. Combine this with Admiral John Kirby, the State Department spokesman  threatening to physically remove Rosa Maria Paya, who had proper accreditation as a member of the press from the State Department press conference with Secretary Kerry and the Castro regime's foreign minister on July 20, 2015 makes the message crystal clear.

Add to this that functionaries at the so-called Cuban embassy closed the entrance so as not to allow a Cuban citizen, Rosa María Payá, to enter and refused to receive her letter requesting the autopsy report for her father, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who was killed on July 22, 2012 the nature of this new relationship is clear. The United States is normalizing relations with the Castro dictatorship NOT Cuba.

Sadly, the road leading to this lamentable embrace by the Obama administration of the Castro regime has come at a cost that continues to rise. History will judge this new policy that only postpones national reconciliation and a democratic transition in Cuba poorly while undermining human rights in the Americas.  There is a principled policy of engagement that could be undertaken but this is not it. Cubans in the island and in the diaspora must now redouble their efforts to push for democratic change using nonviolent means. Below is a partial accounting of the Castro regime's body count of high profile human rights defenders killed so far under the Obama administration within a worsening human rights situation in Cuba.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo

February 23, 2010

Daisy Talavera de las Mercedes Lopez

January 31, 2011

No photo available

Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia 

 May 8, 2011

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo

October 14, 2011

Wilman Villar Mendoza

January 19, 2012 

Sergio Diaz Larrastegui

April 19, 2012 

No photo available

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

July 22, 2012

Harold Cepero Escalante

July 22, 2012

Partial accounting of the Castro regime's body count of Cubans killed by regime agents during the Obama administration:

Angel Izquierdo Medina

July 15, 2011

No photo available

Diosbel Díaz Bioto

December 16, 2015

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina 

April 9, 2015

Partial accounting of the Castro regime's body count of Venezuelans killed on the orders of their intelligence apparatus in Venezuela during the Obama administration as the country has become a virtual colony of the Cuban dictatorship:

Bassil Alejandro Dacosta
February 12, 2014

Robert Redman

February 12, 2014

Génesis Carmona

February 19, 2014

Geraldine Moreno 

February 22, 2014

Kluiverth Roa 

February 24, 2015

The high price of diplomatic relations with the Castro regime

"We are going to have diplomatic relations with the United States without having ceded one iota." - Gerardo Hernandez, Cuban spy sentenced to life in prison for murder conspiracy freed by Obama as part of his deal with Raul Castro. (Capitol Hill Cubans)

Castro and Obama (April 2015) Sirley Ávila machete attacked (May 2015)

The Obama administration has had to bend over backwards in order to arrive at the formal re-establishment of diplomatic relations because since 1977 the Carter administration established de facto diplomatic relations with the opening of interests sections in both countries. Joint military exercises began to be carried out in 1994 during the Clinton administration. Therefore in reality what remained to be done was more symbolism than substance, and easier for the Castro regime to drag its feet knowing that the pressure for a breakthrough weighed more heavily on President Obama and his legacy. They were not disappointed:

• Releasing the three remaining WASP network spies, including Gerardo Hernandez -- who was serving two life sentences, one of them for conspiracy to murder four members of Brothers to the Rescue.
• Ignoring the Castro regime's continuing sponsorship of terrorism and smuggling of weapons to sanctioned countries in order to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
• Delinking the pursuit of full diplomatic relations from the rise in human rights violations in Cuba and in the region by Cuban state security.
• Commitment from President Obama at the State of the Union address to work for the lifting of economic sanctions on the dictatorship.

Never has so much been sacrificed with regards to Cuba policy to obtain so little in return purposefully. The Obama Doctrine, first addressed by Charles A. Kupchan in 2001, and fully fleshed out in his 2010 book,  How Enemies Become Friends The Sources of Stable Peace was summarized by José Azel in the critical May 6, 2015 article The Resurrection of Neville Chamberlain into four steps:

It must begin, according to Kupchan, by making concessions to our enemies in an act of “unilateral accommodation.” These concessions must be “unusual and costly” to signal benign intent. [...] The second phase entails the practice of “reciprocal restraint” where the adversary nations walk away from rivalry, peace breaks out, and geopolitical competition gives way to cooperation.[...] “Social integration” and “the generation of new narratives and identities” are the third and fourth phases of Kupchan’s sequence towards stable peace.

Kupchan in a April 2011 article in Friedrich Ebert Stiftung attempts to refute the charge that this policy is a version of neo-appeasement arguing:

It follows that talking to the enemy is not appeasement  – as is often claimed by engagement’s critics – but, under the right circumstances, good diplomacy. To be sure,  the effort to pursue diplomatic accommodation with an  adversary may not work. The target state may refuse to  reciprocate the initiator’s signals of benign intent, ensuring that confrontation continues.

The trouble with Kupchan's argument is that what he is advocating goes well beyond "talking to the enemy" into what he describes as "unilateral accommodation" setting the stage for "reciprocal restraint." Now when one government is making "unilateral accommodations" and the other side is declaring victory and maintaining an aggressive posture in the real world, while talking the talk of accommodation in diplomatic exchanges, it does share a disturbing similarity to appeasement policies of the 1930s that did not lead to peace but was a precursor to a major war that claimed tens of millions of lives. Underestimating the capability for mischief of what appears to be a weakened totalitarian dictatorship is a script that has played out before with horrible consequences.

This approach not only ignores the underlying conflict between the United States and Cuba but also the conflict between the Cuban dictatorship and the Cuban people. This mentality is also found deeply engrained in other parts of the Obama administration. For example, when 25,000 Cubans made it known that they wanted democratic reforms in 2002 - 2003 through a citizen initiative that challenged the dictatorship, then presidential candidate now Secretary of State, John Kerry said it was "counterproductive."

History rebukes getting into bed with dictatorships, but that is precisely what the White House is doing in Cuba, and unlike the Varela Project,  it promises to be counterproductive to both the interests of the United States and the Cuban people. When this approach is proven a disaster hopefully those formulating policy in the next administration will look to a nonviolent approach that works.