WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced visa restrictions for several unnamed Central American government officials he said were connected to Cuban medical mission programs that include elements of forced labor and the exploitation of Cuban workers.
Rubio did not name the officials nor the countries they are from. “These steps promote accountability for those who support and perpetuate these exploitative practices,” he said in a statement.
“The Cuban labor export program abuses the participants, enriches the corrupt Cuban regime, and deprives everyday Cubans of essential medical care that they desperately need in their homeland.”
Cuba’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Havana has for decades rejected such accusations.
Rubio in February expanded a visa restriction policy to target Cuban officials believed to be tied to a labor program that sends Cuban workers overseas, particularly healthcare workers.
Cuba’s health service generates major export earnings by sending doctors and health workers around the world.
Since its 1959 leftist revolution, Cuba has dispatched an “army of white coats” to disaster sites and disease outbreaks around the world in the name of solidarity. In the last decade, they have fought cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa.
But Cuba has also exported doctors on more routine missions in exchange for cash or goods in recent decades, an increasingly critical source of hard currency in a nation suffering a deep economic crisis.
The United States and Cuba have had a strained relationship since Fidel Castro took over in the 1959 revolution, and a U.S. trade embargo has been in place for decades.
Rubio, a former U.S. senator and the son of immigrants who came to Florida from Cuba in the 1950s, has long opposed more normal relations with Havana, dating back to the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.
He has signaled a tougher stance on the communist-run island, reversing a last-minute effort by the Biden administration to loosen sanctions on long-time foe Cuba and complicating money transfers to the island.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Jasper Ward and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington and David Sherwood in Havana; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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