Cuba on Monday said that US President Donald Trump’s administration denied its health minister a visa to attend a Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) meeting in Washington and accused the US of repeatedly violating its obligations as the host of an international organization.
The Cuban embassy in Washington wrote an e-mail to those who had been invited to attend an event with Cuban Minister for Public Health Jose Angel Portal Miranda while he was in the US capital for the PAHO meeting this week, saying it was canceled because he and his delegation had not been given visas.
PAHO is the WHO’s regional office for the Americas.
“The government of the United States is yet again arbitrarily and unwarrantedly in breach of its obligations as a host country of an international organization,” the e-mail seen by Reuters read.
Earlier this month, Washington ordered the expulsion from the US of two members of Cuba’s delegation to the UN for trying to “conduct influence operations” harmful to US national security.
The US Department of State said it was imposing visa restrictions on Cuban officials responsible for “exploitative” labor practices in the island-nation’s medical services exports program.
“Profiting from the work of the Cuban doctors has been the decades-long practice of the Castros, and it continues today,” the State Department said in a statement.
The Trump administration has accused Cuba of holding medical staff members on missions around the world against their will, sometimes taking away their passports and paying them meager salaries.
Cuba has rejected those allegations as lies aimed at tarnishing its health service, which generates major export earnings by sending more than 50,000 health workers to more than 60 countries.
The doctors, who often work in poor, remote regions with little other healthcare coverage, make good money by Cuban standards, even though they only get to keep 25 percent.
Reversing his predecessor’s policy of detente, Trump has tightened the decades-old US trade embargo since becoming president, targeting foreign investment in Cuba, tourism, remittances and fuel shipments.
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