miércoles, 5 de agosto de 2015

Obama criticized for report on Cuba human trafficking

Obama criticized for report on Cuba human trafficking
BY NORA GÁMEZ TORRES
ngameztorres@elNuevoHerald.com

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio have attacked the
Obama administration for reportedly watering down an annual State
Department report on the rolls of countries, such as Cuba and Malaysia,
in people smuggling operations.

President Barack Obama "and the State Department should be ashamed of
their purely political manipulation of Cuba's human trafficking issues,"
Bush wrote on his Twitter account.

Rubio, a Florida Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations
subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, transnational crime and human
rights, said it was "shameful that President Obama allowed a bunch of
political hacks to alter the administration's human trafficking report
to the benefit of perennial violators like Cuba and Malaysia."

"The president and his administration have set a dangerous precedent
that could lead countries to believe that they can negotiate their way
out of being named and shamed for their human trafficking abuses,
instead of actually adopting reforms and tackling the problem," Rubio said.

"The decision to favor politics over policy has jeopardized the
integrity of the TIP report which has played a vital role in combating
human trafficking the past 15 years. This is a great disservice to the
millions of people who have been victimized or are vulnerable to human
traffickers," he added.

The Reuters news agency reported that senior diplomats in the State
Department prevailed over the analysts in the department's own Office to
Monitor and Combat the Trafficking of Persons, known as J/TIP, who
favored more negative findings for 14 countries. The analysts prevailed
in another three of the disputed assessments.

As a result, countries such as Cuba, Malaysia, China, India, Uzbekistan
and Mexico wound up with better qualifications than the human rights
experts wanted to give them, according to sources quoted in the Reuters
report.

Cuba was removed from the report's list of Tier 3 nations, which include
countries with the worst record on the issues of people trafficking and
forced labor. It was downgraded to the Tier 2 "observation list,"
according to the final report, because although the island "does not
fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking; However it is making significant efforts to do so."

According to Reuters, the analysts' victory in only three of the 17
disputes was the worst in the J/TIP's 15 years of work. A State
Department spokesperson told El Nuevo Herald that the normal methodology
for drafting the report had been followed "scrupulously" and that "final
decisions are taken only after a rigorous discussion and analysis
between the TIP office, the relevant regional offices and leaders in the
Department of State."

"The Secretary of State approves the final narratives and the
qualifications of each country," the spokesperson added.

Since the report was published last week, prominent members of the
Senate Foreign Relations committee have been questioning the decision to
remove Cuba and Malaysia from the black list of countries that do not
combat people smuggling, and they have asked Secretary of State John
Kerry for an explanation.

Sen. Bob Menendez, a Cuban-American Democrat from New Jersey, also
criticized the "politicization" of the report.

In Cuba, "adults and children are subjected to sex trafficking and the
government continues perpetrating abusive practices of forced labor,
coercing tens of thousands of its own doctors and medical professionals
to serve abroad under conditions that violate international norms,"
Menendez said. "As the State Department's own report recognizes that
there has been no progress on forced labor in Cuba, any upgrade of the
country's ranking challenges common sense.

The State Department report says that the sexual trafficking of minors
does take place in Cuba, specially in connection with tourism, and that
the government has "informed" about its efforts to fight these
activities although the information on the issue is scarce. It also
indicates that the Cuban government does not recognize the "forced
labor" of students or doctors in other countries as a problem.

Cuba's foreign ministry, meanwhile, vehemently rejected the country's
inclusion on the Tier 2 "observation list."

"Cuba should not figure in any unilateral list or be subjected to any
monitoring at all," the ministry said in a statement that also
complained that the State Department report contained "tendentious and
manipulated elements on the selfless work … that our medical
collaborators carry out in third countries."

The statement also alleged that the report "distorts the educational and
formative character of the Cuban educational system, which applies the …
(theory) of linking study with work, when it qualified the work carried
out by Cuban students as forced labor."

Source: Obama criticized for report on Cuba human trafficking | Miami
Herald -
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article30006030.html

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