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Havana insults and is insulted: "
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released on Monday, on behalf of the State Department, the “Trafficking in Persons Report 2010.” It is billed as the most comprehensive worldwide report of government efforts to combat trafficking in persons, and covers 177 countries. And Clinton was quick to note that the United States ranked itself as well, and did so based upon the same standards to which it holds the rest of the world in this report. Of course, the United States received favorable marks. Meanwhile…
Havana was outraged to find Cuba as one of the 13 countries in the report that have been put on notice for “not complying with the minimum international standards to eliminate the trade in human beings and sexual slavery,” an offense for which they could face U.S. sanctions (ironic, I know). Still, since Cuba has remained on this list since 2003—in addition to the list of state sponsors of terrorism that equally irks Cuban officials—it does not seem like this could be called anything but a continuation of previous policy for the Obama administration. Indeed, taking Cuba off of the list might have been the more newsworthy event.
Still, the traded barbs are, not unusually, a poor lead-up to migration discussions to come this Friday. Cuba responded with a statement saying,
“Cuba categorically rejects these allegations as false and disrespectful… These shameful slanders profoundly hurt the Cuban people. In Cuba, there is no sexual abuse against minors, but rather an exemplary effort to protect children, young people and women… [We are] among the countries in the region with the most advanced norms and mechanisms for the prevention of abuse.”
It should be noted that U.S. allies in the hemisphere were equally hurt: Guyana and the Dominican Republic both expressed their surprise and argued against the merit of the rankings.
But Havana has also already doled out its own offensive judgments on the international stage this week. Fidel, through a Cuban UN representative in Geneva on Monday, made a truly incredible statement before the UN Human Rights Council that has highly offended Israel (who is, as a close U.S. ally, no friend of Cuba to begin with):
“The hatred felt by the state of Israel against the Palestinians is such that they would not hesitate to send the one and a half million men, women and children of that country to the crematoria where millions of Jews of all ages were exterminated by the Nazis… It would seem that the Fuehrer’s swastika is today Israel’s banner.”
Indeed, he compared the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the extermination of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
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