AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

The Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na has ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with Caribbean coun­tries, urg­ing the U.S. to sup­port the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment. 

This comes as Chi­na de­fends Cu­ba’s con­tri­bu­tion to pro­vid­ing over­seas med­ical mis­sions to a large num­ber of coun­tries.

Ear­li­er this month, the US Don­ald Trump-led  ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­cused both Cu­ba and the Caribbean re­gion of the ex­ploita­tion and ‘hu­man traf­fick­ing’ of Cuban med­ical staff.

But speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence held by the Chi­nese Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs on Wednes­day, spokesper­son Mao Ning called out the U.S for spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion in an ef­fort to sup­press oth­er coun­tries. Chi­na al­so ac­knowl­edged that Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical co­op­er­a­tion has been wel­comed and is ap­pre­ci­at­ed by var­i­ous Caribbean coun­tries.   

“The false nar­ra­tive of ‘forced labour’ has be­come a per­fect ex­cuse and hege­mon­ic tool for the U.S. to sup­press oth­er coun­tries,” the spokesper­son said. 

“Chi­na op­pos­es co­er­cive diplo­ma­cy and urges the US to im­me­di­ate­ly stop  the block­ade and sanc­tions on Cu­ba in any names and to re­move Cu­ba from the list of State Spon­sors of Ter­ror­ism.”

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley joined Cari­com re­gion­al lead­ers in op­pos­ing Trump’s threat to re­voke visas of of­fi­cials from coun­tries em­ploy­ing Cuban doc­tors and nurs­es.

Bar­ba­dos prime min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley shared sim­i­lar views, prais­ing Cuban med­ical doc­tors and nurs­es for help­ing Caribbean coun­tries get through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Cu­ba has re­fut­ed the claim made by the US, la­belling it as an “un­jus­ti­fied ag­gres­sive mea­sure.”

The Chi­nese for­eign min­istry com­mend­ed Cu­ba for dis­patch­ing more than 60,000 med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to over 60 coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, and per­form­ing more than 17 mil­lion much need­ed surg­eries.