HAVANA, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Friday that the U.S. administration has no political or moral authority to judge Cuba's performance against human trafficking.
In a statement broadcasted by the official NTV evening news, the ministry rebuffed Washington's move to add the Caribbean island to its 2019 list of the world's worst countries for human trafficking.
The U.S. report fulfills "a purely political and manipulative goal" and serves as a "pressure weapon" against other countries without respecting the international efforts to fight the trafficking, the ministry said.
"These slander and defamatory campaigns against Cuba meet the purpose of justifying the increasing hostility of the U.S. government and the use of unilateral punitive measures and economic coercion," it added.
Appearing on the U.S. blacklist of countries that are supposedly not effectively combatting human trafficking allows President Donald Trump to impose sanctions based on his presidential prerogatives, with no need to get approval from Congress.
