LIBERTY COALITION URGES THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO STEP UP MEASURES TO COMBAT CUBAN HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN HEALTHCARE WORKERS

A​lexandria, Virginia – A coalition of organizations including Cuba Archive, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and the Global Liberty Alliance sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week urging the administration to step up efforts to hold Cuba to account for human trafficking in healthcare workers. The letter is embedded at the end of this post.

​“The Cuban regime uses medical missions to gain economic and political benefits and, in the process, to undermine U.S. interests throughout the region and beyond,” says the letter. “In Venezuela, Cuba’s medical “collaborators” have long been used as political weapons to export Cuban communism. Cuba’s medical missions have been expelled from Brazil, El Salvador, and, most recently, Ecuador and Bolivia owing to security and human rights issues.”

​The Cuba Archive, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and the Global Liberty Alliance have teamed to help raise awareness of Cuba’s human trafficking in healthcare workers. Among other action items, during the next few months, the coalition will publish evidence of healthcare human trafficking and also hold traffickers to account in a variety of ways.

The coalition recommends the “U.S. government expand its use of economic sanctions and deny U.S. visas to foreign government officials or private sector stakeholders who are known to have been or are implicated in, or responsible for, the exploitation of Cuban medical workers.”
​
“Human trafficking in health workers by Cuba impacts well beyond the island gulag, hurting U.S. national security and foreign policy interests in the Western Hemisphere and beyond,” Jason Poblete, GLA Chief Counsel said. “We look forward to working with the Cuba Archive and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to expose this network and hold lawbreakers to account,” added Poblete.

2011-11-15 Sec. Pompeo Lett... by Jason I. Poblete on Scribd