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The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, urged the United States on Thursday to lift the embargo against the island and allow Cubans to "live their lives."
“The U.S. waged a war and lost. Accept that they lost and let the Cubans live in peace, let the Cubans live their lives. Stop trying to control the world. He [Trump] is not an emperor,” Lula declared during a government event in Pernambuco, in the northeast of the country.
The statements from the Brazilian president come a day after Washington revoked the visas of officials Mozart Julio Tabosa Sales and Alberto Kleiman, accusing them of participating in the execution of the program Mais Médicos, a health cooperation agreement between Brazil and Cuba that the State Department described as “the export of coerced labor”.
"I want to say to my Cuban comrades: the revocation of Mozart [Tabosa]'s visa was because of Cuba. They had gone to Cuba. It is important for you to know that our relationship with Cuba is one of respect for a people that has been a victim of a blockade for 70 years. Seventy years! Today they are suffering due to a blockade that has no justification," emphasized Lula.
The Brazilian leader reaffirmed his support for Havana amid rising tensions with Washington, insisting that bilateral cooperation in health and other sectors will continue despite the sanctions imposed by the U.S.
Lula's statements come after Washington described Mais Médicos as "an unacceptable diplomatic scam of foreign 'medical missions'," and claimed that the program exploited thousands of Cuban professionals under restrictive conditions that violated their labor rights and mobility.
The State Department, based on the testimonies of hundreds of doctors involved in the so-called medical missions exported by Havana, has accused the Cuban regime for years of withholding a significant portion of the salaries of healthcare professionals sent abroad and imposing movement restrictions on them, which international organizations and former collaborators have denounced as forced labor.
The Mais Médicos program, launched in Brazil in 2013 by then-President Dilma Rousseff, was one of the largest destinations for Cuban medical brigades, and the PAHO acted as an intermediary between the Brazilian government and Havana.
The organization has been named in lawsuits in the United States for its role in the contract that governed the participation of Cuban doctors in the program.
The sanctions against Brazilian officials and former executives of the PAHO are in addition to others announced on Wednesday against representatives from Africa, Cuba, and Grenada, as part of what the State Department describes as a strategy to eradicate international networks that facilitate the labor exploitation of Cuban doctors.
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