MANHATTAN New York – Last week’s high-level dialogue on international migration – the first of its kind hosted by the United Nations General Assembly and meant to focus on ways to maximise the benefits of migration – saw a bitter exchange between representatives of Cuba and the United States.

In his address, Cuba’s Carlos Zamora criticised what he described as an “unjust migration order” created to benefit only the richest and most powerful countries that receive skilled labour and “stole the best brains and talent”.

“We cannot settle for approaches aimed at managing migration waves just to meet the needs of the developed world,” he told the gathering of ministers and delegates of approximately 130 countries.

“They sell us, as the panacea for development, remittances that are the fruit of migrants’ sacrifice, while increasingly reducing commitments and official development assistance,” he added.

But Zamora took a direct swipe at the US when he made mention of the “blockade and aggression” against his country. He said the ‘Cuban Adjustment Act’, known in Cuba as the ‘Assasin Act’ that allows any Cuban that arrives in United States territory to become resident “no matter the means and procedures used”, encouraged illegal migration and alien smuggling.

“On the other hand, the Cuban residents of the United States constituted the only group of migrants that was limited in visiting and helping their relatives in their country of origin,’ he fumed.

In exercising her right to reply, American representative Ellen Sauerbrey described Zamora’s remarks as “inappropriate and inaccurate”, saying it disrespected the spirit of the dialogue. She questioned Cuba’s human rights record and called the Cuban government a “brutal” dictatorship which forced many of its citizens to flee and seek refuge in the US which “had taken great efforts to regularise them”.

But Zamora said his delegation rejected every single word uttered by Sauerbrey, criticised the US for acting as the world’s “bug human rights policeman” and for their refusal to work with Cuba on safe and orderly migration. He went on further to accuse the US of protecting terrorists who had committed terrorist acts against Cuba.

On the issue of human rights, he said after the US “unilateral wars”, prison torture at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, its cluster bombing of civilians and brutal blockades, that country had no “moral authority” to discuss human rights.

Sauerbrey, in her reply, again criticised Cuba’s human rights record, this time calling it atrocious, and questioned that country’s intolerance of freedom of expression and persecution of dissidents and human rights defenders.

But Zamora said the so-called dissidents were actually paid by the US and given order by its government to undermine Cuban society. He went on further to say that the only dictatorship was the one the US was trying to impose at the global level.

The dialogue ended on Friday with strong support for a migration forum, the first session of which will be held next year in Belgium.