WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday criticized Qatar and South Africa for accepting doctors from Cuba to battle the coronavirus, accusing the communist island of profiting from the pandemic.
Cuba’s globe-trotting doctors have long been a source of diplomatic soft power and pride for Havana, but Washington says the medical workers only benefit the government and has encouraged them to defect.
“We’ve noticed how the regime in Havana has taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to continue its exploitation of Cuban medical workers,” Pompeo told reporters.
“We applaud leaders in Brazil and in Ecuador and Bolivia and other countries which have refused to turn a blind eye to these abuses by the Cuban regime and ask all countries to do the same, including places like South Africa and Qatar,” he said.
“Governments accepting Cuban doctors must pay them directly. Otherwise, when they pay the regime, they are helping the Cuban government turn a profit on human trafficking.”
South Africa, which like Qatar has friendly relations with the United States, on Monday announced that 217 Cuban doctors had arrived in the country, which has the highest number of coronavirus infections in Africa.
Cuba has sent doctors to more than a dozen countries during the COVID-19 pandemic including hard-hit Italy. France has authorized Cuban teams to help in its overseas territories.
Cuba has made health care a societal pillar despite the poverty of the island, which has been subject to US sanctions for six decades.
Former president Barack Obama sought to reconcile with Cuba, calling the isolation policy a failure, and ended a program in which Washington encouraged Cuban doctors to defect and resettle in the United States — whose capitalist medical system offers exponentially higher incomes.
President Donald Trump’s administration has snapped back US pressure sharply and has imposed visa restrictions on Cuban officials involved in medical missions.
Cuba says it earned $6.3 billion from its medical dispatches in 2018 and used the proceeds to finance its own universal health care coverage.
One of the staunchest critics of the program is Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right ally of Trump, who kicked out 8,000 Cuban health workers as he took office.
Pompeo criticizes Qatar, S.Africa for taking Cuban doctors
https://arab.news/rfqz8
Pompeo criticizes Qatar, S.Africa for taking Cuban doctors
- Cuba’s globe-trotting doctors have long been a source of diplomatic soft power and pride for Havana
- US says medical workers only benefit the government and has encouraged them to defect
Venezuela swears in 5,600 troops after US military build-up
- American forces have carried out deadly strikes on more than 20 vessels, killing at least 87
CARACAS: The Venezuelan army swore in 5,600 soldiers on Saturday, as the United States cranks up military pressure on the oil-producing country.
President Nicolas Maduro has called for stepped-up military recruitment after the United States deployed a fleet of warships and the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean under the pretext of combating drug trafficking.
American forces have carried out deadly strikes on more than 20 vessels, killing at least 87.
Washington has accused Maduro of leading the alleged “Cartel of the Suns,” which it declared a terrorist organization last month.
Maduro asserts the American deployment aims to overthrow him and seize the country’s oil reserves.
“Under no circumstances will we allow an invasion by an imperialist force,” Col. Gabriel Rendon said Saturday during a ceremony at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex, in Caracas.
According to official figures, Venezuela has around 200,000 troops and an additional 200,000 police officers.
A former opposition governor died in prison on Saturday where he had been detained on charges of terrorism and incitement, a rights group said.
Alfredo Diaz was at least the sixth opposition member to die in prison since November 2024.
They had been arrested following protests sparked by last July’s disputed election, when Maduro claimed a third term despite accusations of fraud.
The protests resulted in 28 deaths and around 2,400 arrests, with nearly 2,000 people released since then.
Diaz, governor of Nueva Esparta from 2017 to 2021, “had been imprisoned and held in isolation for a year; only one visit from his daughter was allowed,” said Alfredo Romero, director of the NGO Foro Penal, which defends political prisoners.
The group says there are at least 887 political prisoners in Venezuela.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado condemned the deaths of political prisoners in Venezuela during “post-electoral repression.”
“The circumstances of these deaths — which include denial of medical care, inhumane conditions, isolation, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment — reveal a sustained pattern of state repression,” Machado said in a joint statement with Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition candidate she believes won the election.
