"The Havana syndrome, Andrea, does not exist, it is not in any disease registry, and it has truly been the Washington syndrome from the beginning," the Deputy Director General for the United States of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Johana Tablada, replied to the U.S. Associated Press.
When asked about Cuba's position regarding the program produced by the CBS network, Tablada pointed out that " we are concerned about it, because it is not an investigation: The program produced by the CBS, a powerful U.S. network, is unsustainable and inexplicable; and beyond many adjectives, the presentation of witnesses who have nothing to do with the story, which from the beginning was an operation, today it is presented again not as a journalistic investigation, but as a political operation, as a propaganda operation".
WHAT WAS DELETED FROM CBS' STORY
The Cuban diplomat denounced the non-inclusion, in that audiovisual, of the existence of solid scientific reports, commissioned by Donald Trump's government, which had it shelved for two years, such as the Jason Report, which concludes that the symptoms that could have been genuine cannot be attributed to an extraordinary cause, such as an attack, but are linked to natural conditions, to pre-existing diseases or to environmental issues.
She also mentions investigations by the Cuban Academy of Sciences, a committee of Cuban experts, the two reports of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Government.
Tablada recalls the words of the U.S. National Intelligence Director, Avril Haines, who confirmed that, as a result of the "exhaustive studies of several national security agencies", there is no evidence to support or confirm that the reported symptoms are due to external actions.
"Also the testimonies of people who were allegedly affected and that have been published by the press in the past are omitted in this story, such as the letter that is made by people who were in Havana at the time, and ask the State Department not to take them away, since they did not feel attacked or in danger. That was also deleted from this story", she added.
INTERESTS BEHIND FICTION
The Deputy Director General for the U.S. in Cuban Foreign Ministry questioned the actual interests behind this production, taking into account who are interested in resurrecting, in an electoral year, the false accusations that led to dozens of additional coercive measures against Cuba, and whose main objective was, in 2017, to abruptly halt a process of improvement in relations between Cuba and the United States.
"It was definitely not in Cuba's interest to interrupt that process. Senator Marco Rubio was interested at that time, so was the Trump administration that was arriving, the U.S. government, and that had no way to stop the enthusiasm that there was in the United States, in Cuba, and in the world with an advance in bilateral relations", she denounced; while listing all the other reports of anomalous health incidents in various parts of the world, and the fact that against no other country were measures taken, as did happen in Havana.
NOW THE TARGET IS RUSSIA
When asked why Cuba is interested in the matter, if Russia is now being accused in the production carried out between CBS, the Russian media The Insider and the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Cuban diplomat responded that it is because "Cuba is once again portrayed as a threat to the national security of the United States, and even if Cuba is not put as the alleged main actor, they are presenting the Cuban territory as a place that lends itself to foreign powers or foreign countries that can carry out acts against the United States, and Cuba's tradition of protecting U.S. diplomatic personnel in Havana is well known," she pointed out.
"Cuba will never accept that our territory be used to attack another sovereign state, be it the United States or any other," she argued, and added that it is harmful to revive this fiction, as it associates us once again with the conspiracy theories of sectors that justify the blockade.
