Cuba rejects U.S. accusations of trafficking in persons

HAVANA, Cuba, Jul 19 (ACN) Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla posted on Twitter that the United States has no moral authority to accuse Cuba, deceitfully so, of trafficking in persons and held that the U.S. government will fail in its attempts to tarnish Cuba’s exemplary work in preventing and fighting such practices or to break Cuba’s will to develop international medical cooperation.

Rodríguez Parrilla's tweet refers to the 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report released Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which includes Cuba in the list of countries that fail to comply with international standards on this crime.

Washington mentions in that text 11 governments that allegedly maintain a documented "policy or pattern" of human trafficking, trafficking in government-funded programs or forced labor in government-affiliated medical services or other sectors, among other aspects.

Last November, Cuban Minister of Justice Oscar Silvera Martínez reasserted at the United Nations that Cuba, as a State Party to the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime and its Protocol on Trafficking in Persons, is firmly committed to preventing and fighting such crimes and condemns its unjustified and discriminatory inclusion, for entirely political reasons, in the Trafficking in Persons Report issued by the U.S. State Department.