Cuba’s Power Grab Inside Washington
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady, June 26, 2022, WSJ

Is the Mexican wife of a Cuban official involved in the human-trafficking of tens of thousands of healthcare workers the best candidate in the Western Hemisphere to head the Washington-based Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)? Is a Brazilian whose
fingerprints are all over the use of Cuban doctors as forced labor in his country any better?

Both have been nominated for the job by their respective governments, which are lobbying hard for them. Both deserve to be disqualified.

Cuba is working to get control of PAHO, an arm of the World Health Organization, for the same reason that China wants to control the WHO itself: A public-health authority that can be used in a nontransparent manner is a powerful vehicle for propaganda
and maybe worse.

Biden has announced a new U.S. initiative with PAHO to fund the preparation of 500,000 medical personnel in the region over the next five years, and Havana is licking its chops. Unless the U.S. recovers PAHO’s integrity and transparency, the program is
likely to be used by the regime to deploy many more human intelligence assets around the region disguised as “healthcare workers.”

Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico are now headed by socialists, and most are friendly with Putin. On Aug. 7, with the inauguration of former M-19 guerrilla Gustavo Petro, Colombia will join the
left-wing rat pack. In recent weeks, followers of José Carlos Mariátegui—founder of the Communist Party in Peru, who preached “Indo-American socialism”—have been blocking roads in Quito in an effort to bring down Ecuador’s President Guillermo
Lasso.

The survival or revival of democratic institutions in the region largely depends on the courage and commitment of the locals. But the U.S. can help by pushing back against power grabs like the one Cuba is making for PAHO.

The export of Cuban medical workers to foreign countries where they are paid slave wages, stripped of their passports, denied family visits and local friendships, and forced to live under constant surveillance is no ideological theory. Venezuela’s
independent daily TalCual reported this month that 17 Cubans who had been enslaved as healthcare workers in that country were caught trying to cross the Colombian border. The news outlet said that at least six were returned to Cuba, where they face
prison sentences of up to eight years.

A complaint filed in U.S. federal court in Washington by four Cuban victims of Havana’s human trafficking offers first-person testimony about life inside the notorious “medical missions” run by Cuban intelligence. The class-action lawsuit alleges
that Brazilian Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff used PAHO as a financial intermediary to hide payments to Havana for their work. The second amended complaint of May 12, 2020, states that the trafficked medical personnel were “paid only a
fraction—10% or less—of the fees the Brazilian Government paid PAHO for their services, while PAHO paid at least 85% to the Cuban government, and retained a brokerage fee of 5% for itself.”

According to the complaint, “the Ministry of Health acknowledged the payments to PAHO and that the retention of a large fraction of the salaries earned by the Cuban medical personnel, and PAHO’s payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Cuban
government, was never reported officially.”

Earlier this year the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a federal judge’s Nov 2020 ruling that PAHO doesn’t enjoy “absolute” immunity to allegations related to commercial activity in the U.S. PAHO told me in April
that it “had no role in trafficking or forced labor,” but it is making a second jurisdictional challenge.

This is what makes the candidacy of Mexican Nadine Gasman for the top job at PAHO absurd. Her husband, Joaquín Molina, is a former Cuba representative to PAHO and one of the defendants, along with PAHO, in the class-action lawsuit. Molina is now an
adviser to Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who wants to bring forced Cuban labor to Mexico.

Seeking prestige, Brasilia is backing Jarbas Barbosa for the post, despite his vocal 2013 support for using Cuban medical personnel as forced labor in Brazil. He’s not named as a defendant in the class-action lawsuit, but Brazilian Alberto Kleiman is.
The complaint alleges that as a consultant to the Brazilian health ministry, Kleiman helped cook up the “criminal conspiracy” and later became a PAHO official. Barbosa was in charge of the oversight office of Brazil’s health ministry at the time.
Kleiman’s lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

When Brazil’s Bolsonaro took office in 2019 he said he’d pay Cuban workers directly rather than paying Havana. The Cuban regime ended the program in Brazil.

As the largest contributor to PAHO by far, the U.S. has a responsibility to see that the institution is a force for good. A smart place to start would be to reject Gasman and Barbosa.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuba-pan-american-health-organization-healthcare-workers-forced-labor-human-trafficking-intelligence-agents-socialist-gasman-barbosa-11656268162

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