On February 17, the radical Islamist militia Al-Shabaab, affiliated with the Al Qaeda network, shared on its Telegram channel the news that two Cuban doctors kidnapped almost five years ago in Kenya had died a couple of days before, then of an attack by American drones in the Somali city of Jilib, where they were performing “community services.”
More than a week later, the governments of Cuba, Kenya and Somalia have not been able to confirm the information, and in all this time they have not been able to guarantee the rescue of the doctors, who left their country as part of an international medical mission.
According to the message released by the militia, the drone bombing began at 12:10 p.m., “instantly killing Assel Herrera and Landy Rodríguez.”
The doctors had been sent to Kenya in 2018 as part of a medical brigade made up of a hundred health sector workers.
The militia note denounces that the attack demonstrates “the desperate nature of the operations” of the United States Africa Command (Africom) in Somalia, where the US Government has maintained a military deployment since the first decade of the 2000s, “as well as the incompetence of the American crusaders and their defective intelligence apparatus that has led to the murder of the two hostages.”
To the statement, Al-Shabaab attached two photos of the body of one of the victims, which some believe matches that of Herrera, but so far there is no official confirmation.
At the request of the Federal Government of Somalia, Africom issued a statement admitting that it carried out the airstrike for “collective self-defense,” and that they will report more details about the event following the assessments they are carrying out.
The news has made headlines around the world, and has left the families of Herrera and Rodríguez dismayed, who maintained hope for their rescue, after multiple promises and negotiations between the Governments of Cuba and Kenya after the disappearance of the doctors.
Outrage in family and colleagues
“There is strong indignation in general, both in the family, as well as in friends and colleagues,” Dr. Wilson Nieves, who grew up with Herrera in the town of Delicias, in the eastern province of Las Tunas, told EL PAÍS. where they studied together from primary school and then medical school.
“I have lived it with a lot of pain, with a lot of sadness.
I have thought about it daily.
I sent him congratulations on Messenger on his birthday, in case he could read it or not.
He was a person who was only good.
The anger is very great.”
Nieves also said that, although in these years the Cuban Government built “a very nice house” for Herrera's relatives in Delicias, this does not compensate for any loss.
“There is an orphaned daughter, a widow, and parents who will eternally mourn the loss of a child.
The neighbors and family are devastated.
It is not a pain that goes away by having a new house built for you.”
The convoy carrying Herrera, a specialist in general medicine, and Rodríguez, a surgeon, was intercepted after a shooting on April 12, 2019 in the Kenyan city of Mandera, near the border with Somalia.
The Cubans, who were on their way to work, were kidnapped and it is believed that at this time they were providing health care to members of the terrorist group.
Although very little has been known about them in almost five years, on more than one occasion, the Kenyan Government assured that it had “certainty that they were alive.”
In 2019, Al-Shabab put the possibility of a $1.5 million ransom on the table, but Kenya refused to pay that sum.
The news of their death generated outrage in Cuba, especially after President Miguel Díaz-Canel expressed his condolences on X -formerly Twitter-, and assured that Cuba "does not lose hope of finding them alive."
Some comments on the publication say that “they were left alone,” that in five years they did “absolutely nothing” and that the Cuban Government “sends its people to die in other countries.”
The Cuban Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Public Health and the Minister of Health, José Angel Portal Miranda, have insisted that the authorities remain in permanent communication with their Kenyan and Somali counterparts and that the people of Cuba will be informed once they have information on the incident.
The Speaker of the National Assembly, Esteban Lazo, traveled to Kenya on Tuesday as a High Level Special Envoy and met with President William Ruto to clarify the news.
The US Pentagon, for its part, assured that it would initiate an investigation that could shed light on the incident.
Cuban missions in Kenya
Kenya began to receive Cuban doctors since 2017, as part of the Universal Health Coverage program, where more than one hundred doctors from the island were sent to that country and 50 Kenyans came to Cuba to receive training.
At that time, the African country's health personnel were on strike demanding better salaries.
The presence of Cuban doctors brought tensions in the sector.
The Health Committee of the National Assembly assured that each Cuban doctor received a monthly salary of about 4,257 dollars (of which 851 correspond to the doctor's salary, and 3,406 dollars go to the Government), while the Kenyans received between 1,600 and $2,300, according to the Kenya Salaries and Remuneration Commission.
In 2021, both countries signed new medical collaboration agreements, but in 2023 the Kenyan government said it would not renew the six-year agreement under which the African country hires Cuban doctors.
“We have decided not to renew the agreement with the Cuban doctors because I want to believe that our own doctors are committed to the cause,” Health Minister Nakhumicha Wafula told local press.
The possible death of the two doctors sent to Kenya has also fueled the debate about Cuban medical missions, the contingents of health personnel that the Government of the Island sends to countries around the world, and which at one time represented the largest contribution to the country's economy, even above tourism.
In 2021, the official newspaper
Granma
assured that some 450,000 Cuban health professionals have served in 160 countries around the world.
Dr. Jorge Delgado Bustillo, director of the Central Medical Cooperation Unit, said that in six decades of collaboration his doctors have treated 1,988 million people, “almost a third of humanity,” and have also performed more than 14.5 million surgical operations, more than 4.4 million births and have saved 8.7 million lives.
However, on more than one occasion the Cuban medical missions have been the target of criticism.
The United Nations (UN) has denounced the situation of Cuban professionals in missions abroad on three occasions.
In 2023, Tomoya Obokata, special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, stated in a document that, although he recognizes “the value of Cuban cooperation,” he also continues to receive accusations of acts that qualify as “forced labor.”
By this he refers to the working conditions of Cubans, which have been denounced by more than one health professional, and which include the lack of freedom of expression and association, freedom of movement in the places where they remain, the confiscation of passports, threats, abuses committed by employers, the lack of employment contracts or the controversy surrounding Article 176 of the new Cuban Penal Code, which provides for sanctions of eight years in prison for those who abandon said “missions” or do not return to the country. upon completion, a measure that keeps families separated.
Furthermore, the rapporteur places special emphasis on the issue of salaries for Cuban personnel, one of the most criticized aspects of medical missions, which "would be considered inadequate, because they do not allow them to sustain a dignified life, and are usually below the average salary." of working people in the respective destination countries,” says Obokata.
The complaint insists that the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos SA has an agreement with the province of Calabria, in Italy, where it is stipulated that the total salary amount per doctor is 4,700 euros, but 3,500 euros are transferred from the Government of Calabria to the Cuban state marketing company.
Likewise, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Ghana and Seychelles, doctors must transfer 50% of all payments and remunerations to the Government of Cuba.
For years, health professionals have denounced the poor payments they receive for their services.
Last month, the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) of Mexico accused the Government of Cuba of keeping 94.4% of the salaries of doctors who remained in that country during the pandemic. .
According to the Cuban Observatory of Social Audit (OCAC), between 2009 and 2022, the Government obtained almost 70,000 million dollars from paying medical brigade personnel.
“Doctors suffer these situations and worse,” said Javier Larrondo, president of the NGO Prisoners Defenders, which worked alongside the United Nations in denouncing the situation of professionals on medical missions.
“The Government of Cuba does not care about the status of its doctors, but rather their economic performance.
From 7,000 to 11,000 million dollars a year of accounting profit, while in the Public Health of Cuba the total budget is about 65 million dollars.”
Even so, there are many Cubans who choose to go on medical missions rather than remain in a country with increasingly decadent working conditions, with salaries that are barely enough to make ends meet.
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