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Human Rights Watch is calling on foreign nations to hold the socialist Castro dictatorship accountable for human rights violations in its modern-day slave trade in Cuban doctors.
Cuba: Repressive Rules for Doctors Working Abroad
Receiving Governments Should Press for Change
The Cuban government imposes draconian rules on doctors deployed in medical missions globally that violate their fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Governments seeking support from Cuban health workers to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic should press Cuban authorities to modify applicable regulations and laws that violate the right to privacy, freedom of expression and association, liberty, and movement, among others.
Since March, Cuba has sent roughly 1,500 medical professionals across the world to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic, joining approximately 30,000 Cuban health workers already deployed abroad. Cuban government regulations provide that workers may be disciplined for being “friends” with people who hold “hostile or contrary views to the Cuban revolution.” Health workers may also face criminal penalties if they “abandon” their jobs.
“Cuban doctors deployed to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic provide valuable services to many communities, but at the expense of their most basic freedoms,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Governments interested in receiving support from Cuban doctors should press the Cuban government to overhaul this Orwellian system that dictates with whom doctors can live, fall in love, or talk.”
According to the Cuban government, over the past nearly 60 years, Cuba has deployed over 400,000 health workers across 164 countries to help tackle short-term crises, natural disasters, and, currently, the Covid-19 pandemic. Since March 2020, the Cuban government has sent several contingents of medical personnel to support local healthcare systems in over 20 countries, including several in Latin America.
Since its first medical mission to Algeria in 1963, Cuba has crafted repressive norms that regulate the lives of those deployed abroad. The rules severely restrict health workers’ freedom of expression, association, movement, and privacy.
Cuba regulates even the most mundane aspects of the lives of Cuban medical personnel on missions, in ways that violate their rights to freedom of association.
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