2024-01-04 19:17:00
A group of 274 doctors from the Congo trained in Cuba returned to that country after graduatingjust over a quarter of the almost 1,000 who were studying medicine when in 2019 a revolt demanding better conditions in scholarships in Havana and the payment of late stipends It ended with the expulsion of more than a hundred.
According to the officer’s report Latin Pressthe graduates, mostly general practitioners and technicians, They will now begin the preparation stage in hospitals in their countrywhere they can gain experience before being hired and officially assigned.
According to the Congolese media Brazza’s Diarythe Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Technological Innovation, Delphine Edith Emmanuel, welcomed them upon their arrival on December 31, together with the director of the cabinet of the Minister of Health and Population, Jean Ignace Tendelet.
The owner “reassured” them, the report states: “I would like to assure you that all arrangements are being made for your professional integration,” she said, referring to the recent graduates’ fears of not being able to obtain a job as soon as possible.
According to the Congolese media, The national government sent more than 1,000 medical students to Cuba between 2013 and 2014 in order to fill the gap in health personnel. A first group of graduates returned to the country in 2020.
Congolese students were at the center of the revolt that broke out at the University of Medical Sciences in Havana in April 2019.after dozens of them demanded payment of stipends owed by the Government of their country.
The massive protest ended with the intervention of the Cuban Police and special troopswho used force and firearms against unarmed civilians, as reported through social networks.
Posteriorly, The Ministry of Health (MINSAP) of Cuba declared that these “indisciplines will not be allowed” and that “the pertinent measures would be adopted in accordance with current legislation” on the Island, which led to a purge.
In June of the same year, as Andrea Ngombet, global coordinator of Sassoufit, a civil society organization dedicated to promoting the rule of law and democracy in the Republic of the Congo, told DIARIO DE CUBA, 112 students arrested by authorities were deported to their country in May.
According to Ngombet, the Congolese government sent police and members of the secret service to Cuba to escort the students.
A Congolese source in Havana said that Cuban authorities would be obliged to respect the Geneva treaty and avoid deportation, given the danger that students would face in the Congo. However, the Government of Miguel Díaz-Canel agreed to expel them.
“It is a shame for the Congo and for Cuba,” criticized Ngombet.
The student protest movement in Cuba was divided by political pressures, explained the global coordinator of Sassoufit. Until March 2019, Congolese students in Cuba accumulated 27 months of arrears in the payment of their scholarships, but after the demonstrations they were paid 12 months.
“The fear is that once the students are in the Congo, trace of them will be lost, and the Government will wash its hands of it saying that it does not know where they are,” Ngombet warned.
Apart from the rebels, Havana and Brazzaville would have agreed to repatriate other scholarship recipients for having recorded “poor academic results.”
Hundreds of foreign students from various specialties study in Cuba, many of them with scholarships paid for by the governments of their countries. This is an important entry of resources for the island’s regime.
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