U.S. Restricts Visas in Another Attack on Cuban Medical Missions

The U.S. Department of State reported that it imposed visa restrictions on Cuban officials linked to the medical missions abroad program in another attack on the Caribbean country.

According to a report by Prensa Latina in Washington, Donald Trump’s administration, which for months has been attacking one of the most important solidarity programs in the Caribbean country, justified the measure by arguing that these people are responsible for ‘certain exploitative and coercive labor practices’.

Despite the worldwide recognition of the work done by Cuban health professionals in the most varied geographies of the world and their voluntary character, the State Department mentioned in a statement, without alluding to evidence, that the participants in these missions work long hours without rest, with scarce salaries and unsafe housing.

Through that statement, the federal entity called a program praised by international organizations ‘fundamentally flawed’ and called on the nations with which the island cooperates to ensure safeguards against what Washington refers to as alleged ‘labor abuse and exploitation.

Late last July, the State Department reported for the first time that it would impose visa restrictions against Cuban officials related to health cooperation abroad, an action that, it said at the time, could also affect members of those people’s immediate family.

Last month, meanwhile, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced that it was offering up to three million dollars to organizations that ‘would investigate, collect and analyze information’ related to alleged violations of the human rights of health personnel in the Caribbean country.

In all its pronouncements against the well-known Cuban program, the Trump administration never mentions the severe damages caused to the health sector of the largest of the Antilles by the US blockade against the island for almost six decades.

Cuba’s permanent mission to the UN indicated on Monday in a statement that from April 2018 to last March the siege caused losses in that area by more than 104 million dollars, a figure that exceeds by more than six million the impact of the previous year.

(With information from PL in Spanish)

Written by Radio Grito de Baire