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. 

One year ago today the Obama Administration gutted the Cuban Adjustment Act and closed the door to Cuban trafficking victims

Obama's terrible legacy in Cuba.

 

Florida Keys News reported on December 22, 2017 that "[f]or the second time in three months, Cuban migrants made landfall in the Florida Keys this week." This blog also documented Cubans trying to reach the United States in May of 2017. According to Elena Toledo writing in the PanAm Post 15,135 Cubans were declared “inadmissible” in the United States in 2017 and 14,037 Cubans were rejected from entering through Laredo, Texas alone. According to the Miami Herald, 15,410 Cubans entered the United States in fiscal year 2017.



These draconian measures are the result of an order issued by the Obama Administration one year ago today. The Office of the Press Secretary at The White House on January 12, 2017 released a "Statement by the President on Cuban Immigration Policy" that did two concrete things: further restricted the Cuban Adjustment Act and ended the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program.

They come not seeking the American dream but fleeing the Cuban nightmare

The Obama administration secretly negotiated with the Castro regime, and did not consult with Congress, in restricting the Cuban Adjustment Act which is US law. This is the second time that it has happened. From 1966 until 1995 The Cuban Adjustment meant that if a Cuban touched US territorial waters the Coast Guard would pick them up and take them to shore and they would obtain residency. Bill Clinton in 1995 reinterpreted the law to mean that Cubans had to touch land (dry feet) or be deported if caught in the water (wet feet). Now Obama has re-interpreted the law a step further saying that he will deport all Cubans who arrive in the US without a visa. This is a narrower interpretation of the law by the Executive branch without consulting with Congress.

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.

President Barack Obama on January 12, 2017 also shut the door on Cuban medical doctors, in third countries, victims of trafficking. Months earlier the Obama Administration  politicized the Trafficking in Persons Report of the State Department, undermining its credibility. This was done by the White House to placate long standing demands of the Castro regime and to whitewash the dictatorship's terrible record on human trafficking.

Cuban doctors trafficked and exploited by the Castro regime

Months after the door was closed to Cuban doctors in third countries, to placate the Castro regime, The New York Times in a September 29, 2017 article titled "Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’" exposed the Castro regime's trafficking in medical professionals.

"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 so that regime elites can cash in on billions of dollars was a decision taken by the outgoing Obama Administration on January 12, 2017. It is important to remember and observe this lamentable statement by President Obama on Cuban migration one year later.

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

The New York Times reports that Cuban doctors are tired of being slaves

Cuban doctors, like most Cubans, are tired of being enslaved.

Cuban doctors trafficked and exploited by the Castro regime

 Just yesterday I was justifiably calling The New York Times to task for a terrible piece on Communist China's record on women and in passing highlighted the paper's shameful past of covering up Josef Stalin's genocide in Ukraine and assisting Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba. Today Ernesto Londoño, the modern descendant of Herbert Matthews, managed to somewhat surprise me with 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:

"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."

This is news because it is being reported in The New York Times, that for decades has sought to spin a pro-regime narrative in its pages. 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 their work." 

Juan Alfonso, a Cuban doctor, living and practicing medicine in Chile, was interviewed by the PanamPost on October 15, 2015 and explained why he had to flee his homeland, "I will tell you something: I would have liked to stay in Cuba. I left because I could barely afford to buy a single egg to eat a day." The New York Times Editorial Board in 2014 was trying to spin that Cuban doctors were fleeing to the United States because of the Cuban Adjustment Act and a special immigration program that sought to exacerbate a brain drain in Cuba.

Londoño repeats the argument in this article to soften the cruel reality that "President Barack Obama in January [2017] ended the program, which had allowed Cuban doctors stationed in other countries to get permanent residency visas for the United States."

Londoño's article focuses on Cuban doctors in Brazil, appealing to the courts for the right to stay there, and Brazilian judges who view their treatment as modern day slavery. These professionals are spread around the world, but there have also been other cases of Cuban workers in brutal conditions not mentioned in Mr. Londoño's article.

In 2006 the case of Cuban workers forced to work 112 hours a week for 3 cents an hour in Curaçao made the news. The workers had been unpaid; their compensation was deducted from Cuba’s debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company. Three workers sued the company accusing  "Curaçao Drydock Company of subjecting them to forced labour in a lawsuit in US federal court under the Alien Tort Claims Act and other laws.  They alleged that the company conspired with the Cuban Government to traffic them and other workers to Curaçao to work for Curaçao Drydock Company as part of a forced labour programme."

Unfortunately in the drive to normalize relations with the Castro regime the previous Administration also watered down its report on human trafficking in Cuba, giving the Cuban dictatorship a pass. This drive was aided and abetted by The New York Times and Mr Londoño the fruits of which we are seeing now with over 20 diplomats badly injured in mysterious attacks and the U.S. Embassy in Havana effectively shutttered.

The New York Times article on the Cuban medical doctors revolt gives me some hope that the paper may finally be changing its ways, but the past 85 years also tells me to remain skeptical.

Special rapporteurs, human trafficking in Cuba and fake news

How the Associated Press outdid the Obama State Department in downplaying Cuba's human trafficking problem.

Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially in women and children is reported to be arriving in Cuba on April 10th to examine the "challenges Cuba faces in addressing trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation, as well as any other forms of trafficking." The last time that the Castro regime announced that it was going to permit a visit by the UN expert on torture was in 2009 and it got a lot of positive publicity but never followed through. However no one is reporting on this episode now, but harking back to a 2007 visit by Jean Ziegler, who was the the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food but what goes unmentioned is that Mr. Ziegler has a pattern of pandering to tyrants. He was one of the founders of the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights that in 1998 was awarded to Fidel Castro. UN Watch, the Geneva based UN watchdog summarized Jean Ziegler's support for serial human rights violators:

In 1986, Mr. Ziegler served as advisor to Ethiopian dictator Colonel Mengistu on a constitution instituting one-party rule.  In 2002 he praised the Zimbabwean dictator, saying,  “Mugabe has history and morality with him.”  According to Le Monde, he paid visits to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Kim Il-Sung in North Korea.  Mr. Ziegler is also a long-time supporter of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, whose regime Mr. Ziegler hailed during an official visit in October [2007], while he refused to meet Cuban dissidents. Also this year, during an interview in Lebanon, Mr. Ziegler said, “I refuse to describe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

This is not the profile of a fair minded human rights expert. Let us hope that Ms. Giammarinaro does a better job in Cuba and at least meets with dissidents to get another view beyond the official line by the dictatorship. Something the last "independent expert" Mr. Ziegler refused to do.

Human trafficking in Cuba is an ongoing problem that the Obama State Department sought to downplay in its 2015 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report  reclassifying the island from Tier 3 to Tier 2 watch list and human rights experts at the State Department denounced its politicization at the time observing that there had been no improvement to justify the move. Nevertheless the Associated Press has once again gone a step further in fake news on Cuba by reporting that the United States "removed Cuba from a blacklist of countries that have failed to combat modern-day slavery after both countries formally restored diplomatic relations in July 2015." This is not true and Cuba remains on the blacklist on Tier 2.

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 in Cuba make approximately $25 dollars a month in salary. 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 their work." 

 The Castro regime has exploited other Cubans in overseas work. The 2006 case of Cuban workers forced to work 112 hours a week for 3 cents an hour in Curaçao made the news. The workers had been unpaid; instead their compensation was deducted from Cuba’s debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company. Three workers sued the company accusing  "Curaçao Drydock Company of subjecting them to forced labour in a lawsuit in US federal court under the Alien Tort Claims Act and other laws.  They alleged that the company conspired with the Cuban Government to traffic them and other workers to Curaçao to work for Curaçao Drydock Company as part of a forced labour programme."

I look forward to reading Ms. Giammarinaro's report with great interest, but won't be following it in the Associated Press because too often to keep their bureau open in Cuba they get the news wrong. Reuters, The Miami Herald, and others although not perfect do a better job. Nevertheless they all failed to mention the last special rapporteur's support for dictators, the failure to follow through on the 2009 invite of the UN special rapporteur on torture and Cuba's terrible record on human trafficking. Nevertheless the Associated Press remained the worse of the worse in their reporting.

The Madness of the Obama Administration: Sharing law enforcement information with an outlaw regime

A counterproductive agreement

The Office of the Spokesperson at the U.S. Department of State issued a statement that "On January 16, the United States and Cuba signed a bilateral Law Enforcement Memorandum of Understanding to deepen law enforcement cooperation and information sharing." Let that sink in for a moment. The United States is sharing law enforcement information with an outlaw regime that in the span of the past four years has been exposed: smuggling tons of heavy weapons to North Korea and Colombia in violation of international sanctions; acquiring a U.S. hellfire missile then refusing to return it to the U.S. for over a year; linked to drug smuggling in Venezuela and a shipment of cocaine intercepted at the Panama Canal;  and was only taken off the list of state terror sponsors in 2015 because of the Obama Administration's normalization drive.

Cocaine shipment on Cuban ship camouflaged among tanks of molasses 

Despite all this the Obama Administration has agreed that "under this memorandum, the United States and Cuba will continue the Law Enforcement Dialogue process, which includes technical exchanges on specific law enforcement issues of mutual concern such as counternarcotics, money laundering, fraud and human smuggling, and counterterrorism."

Sadly, human trafficking experts have called out the Obama Administration and the State Department for watering down its human trafficking report for political reasons in order to give Cuba a better score than it actually warrants.

To say that sharing law enforcement information is counterproductive at best is an understatement. January 20th can't come fast enough.

North Koreans and Cubans work overseas in slave-like conditions for their respective regimes

A Tale of Two Communist Regimes and Media Coverage 

Cuba and North Korea Flag Pins

Many in the media, the Obama Administration, and some members of Congress are trying to sell the idea that the regime in Cuba is normal, but the facts in evidence demonstrate otherwise. If there is one country that Cuba shares a number of traits in common with, it is North Korea. That the Castro regime was caught in 2013 smuggling 240 metric tons of weapons to North Korea in violation of international sanctions should not be a surprise considering the outlaw nature of both regimes.

However, the media coverage on Cuba and North Korea could not be farther apart. For example, Time Magazine on October 29, 2015 reported that "North Korea has sent tens of thousands of its people to countries around the world to work in conditions that amount to modern slavery, according to a U.N. researcher who monitors human rights in the totalitarian state." The number in its headline was that 50,000 North Koreans work overseas in "slave-like conditions." Both Cuba and North Korea make outrageous health care claims but again media reaction is dramatically different.

Meanwhile, the Castro regime in Cuba does the same thing and the media reporting is quite different. According to sources friendly to the Castro regime place the number of Cuban doctors sent by the regime on an "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 Castro regime. Cuban doctors in Cuba make approximately $25 dollars a month in salary. 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 their work." North Koreans working abroad are making between $120 and $150.

Juan Alfonso, a Cuban doctor, now living and practicing medicine in Chile, was interviewed by the PanamPost on October 15, 2015 and explained why he had to flee his homeland, "I will tell you something: I would have liked to stay in Cuba. I left because I could barely afford to buy a single egg to eat a day." The New York Times is trying to spin that Cuban doctors are fleeing to the United States because of the Cuban Adjustment Act and a special immigration program. Perhaps they should talk to this Cuban doctor who can offer an alternative explanation:

 "I was told that during a meeting of the [Communist] Youth, an Olympic athlete stood up and said he thought doctors should work extra shifts for free. The whole world applauded, and the motion passed unanimously. There is no union to defend doctors in Cuba. Many of us would wake up around midnight from hunger pains, and no one ever gave us anything; maybe a slice of bread, at the most."

In 2006 the case of Cuban workers forced to work 112 hours a week for 3 cents an hour in Curaçao made the news. The workers had been unpaid; instead their compensation was deducted from Cuba’s debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company. Three workers sued the company accusing  "Curaçao Drydock Company of subjecting them to forced labour in a lawsuit in US federal court under the Alien Tort Claims Act and other laws.  They alleged that the company conspired with the Cuban Government to traffic them and other workers to Curaçao to work for Curaçao Drydock Company as part of a forced labour programme."

According to the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre:

The case went to trial only on the issue of damages.  On 31 October 2008 the court awarded a total of $80 million in damages to the plaintiffs, saying there was “overwhelming and uncontroverted evidence” of the plaintiffs’ claims.  The judgment stated that this amount reflected the severe physical and psychological injuries of the plaintiffs, the defendant’s gross misconduct, the universality of the offense, the gains made by the company from the conduct and the potential deterrent effect it could have on other companies. In July 2013, the plaintiffs sought to enforce the US judgement against the defendant's assets in Singapore. The court of first instance declared the US court decision enforceable in Singapore, and this was confirmed by the High Court of Singapore in June 2015.

 Meanwhile the Obama Administration in a controversial maneuver watered down the State Department's trafficking report on Cuba in order to put the Castro regime in a better light in its continuing human trafficking practices. Cubans inside and outside of the island are afraid to speak out. Inside of Cuba that can imprison you for enemy propaganda from 1 to 5 years and if you speak to a foreigner under Law 88 (also known as the Gag Law) for 20 years in prison. Outside of Cuba, Juan Alfonso explained in the interview with PanamPost that:

 "People who disobey the government, and speak to the press about the country, are not allowed to return. The regime owns your passport. They can prevent you from reuniting with your family in a new country."

 The regime in Cuba remains totalitarian and systematically terrorizes and violates the rights of all Cubans, all the time. This is an abnormal regime and normalizing relations with it will not lead anywhere good. Nor will closing the door to fleeing refugees.

General Raul Castro embraces North Korean ally General Kyok Sik Kim

Five reasons normalization of relations with Cuba is another Obama foreign policy failure

Post borrows from a blogpost from the Free Cuba Foundation posted yesterday and adds on to it.

Despite what the Obama Administration and mainstream media would have you believe the United States and the Castro regime have had extensive diplomatic contacts since 1977, military contacts since 1994, and trade since 2000. This is why when Obama pledged on December 17, 2014 the objective of normalizing diplomatic relations the Castro regime was able to raise numerous demands that the United States has complied with that undermine U.S. security and credibility. Below are five reasons why the normalization of relations with the Castro regime is unfolding into another Obama foreign policy failure: 

 

1. Releasing Castro spies on December 17, 2014 serving life prison sentences, including one of them imprisoned for conspiracy to murder three U.S. citizens and one resident. 

2. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary removing the Castro regime from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on May 29, 2015.  

3. On July 27, 2015 watered down the State Department's human trafficking report for political aims including ignoring the severity of sex trafficking in Cuba and the use of slave labor.

 

4. Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a press conference with the Foreign Minister of the Castro regime on July 20, 2015 and had the daughter of a martyred dissident threatened and silenced. The State Department's spokesperson Admiral John Kirby took Rosa María Payá, an accredited member of the press, aside and told her if she asked a question that she would be physically removed.Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, her dad, was assassinated by the Castro regime on July 22, 2012.


5. As President Obama and the State Department normalize relations with the Castro regime violence and repression against dissidents and refugees has risen in Cuba. 

Secretary of State John Kerry will be in Havana, Cuba to raise the flag at the US Embassy on Friday, August 14, 2015 and that would be the perfect day to remind the world the price paid in compromising not only the national security of the United States (freeing terrorist spies and letting ones guard down as to the terrorist threat posed by the dictatorship) but also undermining the credibility of the State Department's report on human trafficking and respect for human rights. Above are images that you can click on and share with others on social media or print them out to use in public protests to hold the administration accountable for another foreign policy failure while recognizing that there is a nonviolent alternative.

Obama's International Legacy: Watering down human trafficking report for political considerations

Covering up human trafficking for tyrants and despots worldwide

 (L-R) Obama joins hands with Burma, China tyrants & Malaysia's PM + Raul Castro

 Nice to see the mainstream media catching up and breaking an important story. Last week on July 28, 2015 this blog reported on how the State Department was undermining the integrity of the Trafficking in Persons Report by politicizing it when it took Cuba off the list of worse offenders. According to Reuters, in the Special Report: State Department watered down human trafficking report by Jason Szep and Matt Spetalnick, it is even worse that 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. (Graphic looking at some of the key decisions here: reut.rs/1gF2Wz5)

This may seem like another small compromise to having the U.S. Interests Section re-designated an Embassy in Havana but it once again returns me to the words of Vaclav Havel nearly six years ago. Back in 2009, President Barack Obama had backed out of meeting with the Dalai Lama due to an upcoming trip to China, Havel offered the following reflection on October 12, 2009 at the Forum 2000 conference:

I believe that when the new Laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize postpones receiving the Dalai Lama until after he has accomplished his visit to China, he makes a small compromise, a compromise which actually has some logic to it. However, there arises a question as to whether those large, serious compromises do not have their origin and roots in precisely these tiny and very often more or less logical compromises.

 Now the State Department's human trafficking report will be taken less seriously than it may have been in the past and the authority of the United States on this subject is now lessened than it was before. What impact will this reduced authoritative and moral stature have on victims of the trafficking around the world? What other unintended consequences will it generate.

Undermining the integrity of the Trafficking in Persons Report of the State Department

 Obama administration's Orwellian standard on Cuba
 

The Obama administration apparently is continuing to pay off the Castro regime for agreeing to normalize diplomatic relations by whitewashing the dictatorship's record first on terrorism and now on human trafficking by the State Department is upgrading 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:

"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."

The Castro regime has been directly linked to exporting slave labor to the Curaçao Drydock Company in a court of law (outside of Cuba) in 2008.Conditions inside of Cuba for workers are not much better.