Cuba reacted angrily on Tuesday to its inclusion on a US list of countries that could be sanctioned for failing to fight human and child trafficking, calling it a “shameful slander” and part of Washington’s efforts to justify its trade embargo.
Cuba is one of 13 countries put on notice on Monday that they are not complying with the minimum international standards to eliminate the trade in human beings and sexual slavery, and could face US penalties.
Compiled by US President Barack Obama’s administration, the list also includes Iran, North Korea and Myanmar. Another 58 countries were placed on a “watch list” that could lead to sanctions unless their records improve.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Cuba was singled out for allegedly not doing enough to prevent the trafficking of children who work as prostitutes, mostly serving foreign tourists. It also said some Cuban doctors have complained that the government leases out their services to foreign countries as a way of canceling Cuba’s debt.
“Cuba categorically rejects these allegations as false and disrespectful,” Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, director of the Cuban foreign ministry’s North American affairs office, said in a statement sent to the foreign news media on Tuesday.
She said the allegations were all the more offensive because the government had concentrated its limited resources on protecting women and the young, providing far more for the most vulnerable members of society than most nations in the region.
While Cubans receive low wages, the country offers free education through college, free health care and heavily subsidized housing and transportation. Crime rates and drug usage are extremely low in a country where the state maintains near total control.
“These shameful slanders profoundly hurt the Cuban people. In Cuba, there is no sexual abuse against minors, but rather an exemplary effort to protect children, young people and women,” Vidal Ferreiro said.
She said Cuban laws “put us among the countries in the region with the most advanced norms and mechanisms for the prevention of abuse.”
Cuba has been included as one of the worst offenders on the US Department of State’s human trafficking list since 2003. It is also on a separate list of countries that the US deems to support terrorism.
The latest report notes that Cuban laws against trafficking appear stringent, but that the country has not provided enough evidence to show they are being enforced.
Interestingly, the report does not concentrate on Cubans seeking to emigrate to the US, a diaspora that has meant vast profits for traffickers, who can charge thousands of dollars for illicit transportation to the US, often through Mexico.
It was not clear what sanctions, if any, Cuba could face. It is already the target of a 48-year trade embargo, which bans the sale of most US goods on the island. US tourists are not allowed to vacation in Cuba, depriving the Caribbean hotspot of what would likely be its top source of visitors.
Cuba refers to the embargo as a blockade and rightly or wrongly blames it for most of its economic woes. While many countries criticize the country’s treatment of political prisoners and lack of democracy, the embargo is rejected each year in a lopsided UN vote.
Many had hoped relations between the US and Cuba would improve under Obama, but the two sides have made little progress.
The relationship has soured most recently over the arrest in December last year of a US contractor whom Cuba accuses of spying. He has been held without charge for more than six months.
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RSS