There are many ways to measure the Castro regime's total disregard for the welfare of its citizens.
For instance, the regime is complicit — whether by its inaction or, more likely, its active participation — in the exploiting of women and children for the sexual pleasure of foreign tourists.
The chief pimps are the Castro brothers themselves — Raúl, as head of the military, which runs the Cuban tourism industry; and Fidel, because he gets a cut of all the action.
The U.S. State Department's Trafficking In Persons report, which was released earlier this year, has the details:
Cuba is a source country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced child labor. The nature and extent of trafficking in the country is hard to gauge due to the closed nature of the government and a lack of non-governmental reporting. However, Cuba is a major destination for sex tourism, which largely caters to hundreds of thousands of European, Canadian, and Latin American tourists. Cuba’s thriving sex trade involves large numbers of minors and there is anecdotal evidence that state-run hotel workers, travel company employees, taxicab drivers, bar and restaurant workers, and law enforcement personnel are complicit in the commercial sexual exploitation of these children. There are also reports that Cuban women have been trafficked to Mexico for sexual exploitation, in addition to unconfirmed reports that Cubans are forced to work as deckhands on smuggling trips in order to pay off large smuggling debts. Cuban forced labor victims also include children coerced into working in commercial agriculture.
Just remember this the next time some American starts to clamor for the right to vacation in Castro's hell.
Read all of the report's section on Cuba here.
(H/T to Miscelaneas de Cuba.)
Recent Comments