PORT OF SPAN, Trinidad – Caribbean Community (CARICOM) foreign ministers met on Friday to discuss the decision by the United States to revoke the visas of foreign government officials whose countries employ Cuban doctors and nurses.
Cuban medical brigade arriving in the Caribbean (File Photo)“On the morning of Friday, February 28, as Minister of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs I represented Trinidad and Tobago at a special meeting of CARICOM’s COFCOR, which is our Council for Foreign and Community relations”, Dr. Amery Browne said.
“This meeting was convened specifically to discuss a CARICOM response to the announcement from the State Department regarding states working with the Cuban medical brigade,” Browne added.
Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was announcing “the expansion of an existing Cuba-related visa restriction policy that targets forced labour linked to the Cuban labour export programme.
“This expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labour export programme, particularly Cuba’s overseas medical missions”.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who left Cuba in pursuit of the American dream, said in the statement posted on the US Department of State’s website, that the new policy also applies to the immediate family of those people supporting the Cuban programme.
“The department has already taken steps to impose visa restrictions on several individuals, including Venezuelans, under this expanded policy,” he added.
Browne said that CARICOM foreign ministers, who met virtually, agreed ‘to seek additional information and clarifications from the United States State Department as most of our member states have engagements with the Cuban medical brigade.
“Additionally, CARICOM foreign ministers are arranging a meeting with the US special envoy for our region to take place in Washington in the second week of March,” Browne said.
He said with respect to Trinidad and Tobago, “we remain in extremely close contact with the US embassy and our other counterparts and contacts and we continue to focus heavily on our diplomacy and positive engagements with the US and other partners.
‘We are in no rush to assume that Trinidad and Tobago or CARICOM officials are in any way caught up in this intensified focus on Cuba,” Browne added.
Suriname Foreign Affairs Miniser, Albert Ramdin said that “there is a similar view throughout the region that these decisions, will impact in a very direct way, the services countries cannot fund in terms of mediccal care and so on.
“So there is a common understanding and I thik we all agree as well that we shuld have a dialogue, a conversation with the United States on an agenda between the both regions n many issues and this is one of them”.
Ramdin, who participated in the foreign affairs ministers meeting said “I hope that we can see that happening very soon. We are in the same geographical space, the US is an important partner and we must ensure that they understand also the needs of the region”.
The communique issued Friday following last weeks, CARICOM summit in Barbados, noted that the regional leaders were “gravely concerned with the continuing deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Cuba resulting from the embargo imposed on the people and Government of Cuba by the Government of the United States of America.
“The Conference renews its call for the lifting of the unilateral financial, economic, and trade embargo and for Cuba to be immediately removed from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism,” the communique added.
Rubio, in his statement, said that Cuba continues to profit from the forced labour of its workers and that that regime’s abusive and coercive labour practices have been well documented.
“Cuba’s labour export programmes, which include the medical missions, enrich the Cuban regime, and in the case of Cuba’s overseas medical missions, deprive ordinary Cubans of the medical care they desperately need in their home country,” Rubio said, and that Washington remains committed to countering forced labour practices around the globe.
After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Havana established a programme to send its medical personnel overseas, particularly to Latin America, Africa and Oceania , and to bring medical students and patients to Cuba for training and treatment respectively. The project has been expanded to include several Caribbean countries.
In 2020, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) expressed its deep appreciation to Cuba for the medical support provided to the sub-region to assist with efforts to combat the spread of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The grouping said that the provision of specialised health care through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigades had not only augmented the scarce medical resources of OECS member states but has provided assurance to the general populations of the region’s capacity to fight and manage COVID-19.
At least 473 Cuban medical personnel worked alongside their Caribbean counterparts in eight countries, namely Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, to assist in managing the spread of COVID-19.
“The OECS Authority greatly values the work of the Henry Reeve Medical Brigades and has reiterated its desire to work with all friendly Governments that offer tangible support in the face of the grave existential threat posed to lives and livelihoods in the small island states of the Caribbean,” the sub-grouping said then.
Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Guyana’s Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, told reporters that Cuban healthcare workers have been going to countries for a “very, very, long time and has transcended several US administrations”.
He praised that system’s support for the health sector, adding that “the Cuban medical presence in the region has had some positive impact on healthcare delivery across the region”.
Jagdeo said the matter was not confined to Guyana but extended across the Caribbean and that if CARICOM leaders succeed in securing a meeting with US President Donald Trump or Rubio, a number of issues such as trade, deportees and the Cuban healthcare support would be on the region’s list of issues to be discussed.
“We felt that (the US) President should see the region not through the eyes of a third party but directly get views from the leaders of the region,” Jagdeo told reporters.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that Rubio’s decision was “based on lies” and will “affect health services for millions of people in Cuba and around the world.
“Once again, Marco Rubio is placing his personal interests above those of the United States,” he wrote on social media platform X.
