A group of 50 Cuban doctors arrived this Wednesday in Calabria as part of a controversial agreement between the Italian region and the island’s regime.
“They tried to stop us, with controversies and bureaucratic setbacks, but we did it,” celebrated Roberto Ochiuto, president of that Italian region in his profile on Facebookwhen reporting the arrival of the Cuban doctors.
“As I have said on multiple occasions, they are not going to steal any work from Italian doctors, but they will help us keep the wards and hospitals open,” Ochiuto justified, in an indirect reference to the complaints made by human rights organizations about that agreement.
“It is our duty to face the emergency with all the tools we have at our disposal, to guarantee care and services to the citizens of Calabria. We are not going to stop!” the Italian official concluded his message.
After three weeks of studying the Italian language, this group of Cuban doctors will go to work in various health centers in Calabria, reports the local newspaper Italy24.
In early December, the NGO Prisoners Defenders presented to the United Nations and the International Criminal Court a formal accusation against the Government of that Italian region for alleged practices of human trafficking, slavery, persecution and other inhumane acts against Cuban doctors.
In its lawsuit, this organization stated that ”the Government of Calabria hands over to Cuba 75% of the salary of Cuban doctorsleaving a real salary for doctors less than 60% of the country’s average salary”.
Another of the violations denounced by Prisoners Defenders is that the Calabrian authorities leave the evaluation of the “moral integrity of professionals” in the hands of the authorities of the regime, which allows the immediate termination of the contract if the Cuban party considers it so.
In its report, this human rights organization accuses the Calabrian government of violating Italian and European legislation “by skipping all the orthodox validation of Cuban professionals, because nor are titles legalized by universities and the Ministry of Education evaluatednor are the subjects and qualifications obtained by each professional evaluated.”
At the end of November, in an attempt to cover the complaints of rights violations human rights of Cuban doctorsItaly changed the way they were hired and established the ”fixed-term subordinate contract”, instead of the freelance contract, as was the case up to that date.
However, the rest of the conditions demanded by the Cuban side remained unchanged.
The so-called “medical missions” have received the term forced labor by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Other organizations, like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Foundation and the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of the Child of the United Nationshave also condemned the export of doctors by the Cuban regime to several countries.