YAHOO NEWS: Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel next week to the Caribbean, where he will meet with several leaders as part of a three-nation tour, three sources said.
On Wednesday Rubio will travel to Jamaica, where he will be hosted by Prime Minister Andrew Holness for talks. He will then travel on to Guyana and Suriname, where he will meet with their respective presidents, Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Chandrikapersad “Chan” Santokhi. The two-oil rich nations on the tip of South America are part of the the 15-member Caribbean Community regional trade group known as CARICOM.
Last month, during a regional summit in Barbados, the bloc’s chairwoman, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, extended an invitation to President Donald Trump to visit the Caribbean and added the leaders also hoped to meet with senior administration officials. Soon after, Mauricio Claver-Carone, Trump’s special envoy to the Americas, confirmed to the Miami Herald that both he and Rubio were planning to visit sometime this month.
Mottley plans to be in Kingston, where she will represent CARICOM. Trinidad and Tobago, which is responsible for matters about security, will be represented by its newly minted prime minister, Stuart Young. The final leader who has been invited to meet with Rubio is the newly installed head of Haiti’s embattled Transitional Presidential Council, Fritz Alphonse Jean.
Rubio’s visit comes as leaders grow increasingly concerned about the quickly deteriorating security situation in Haiti, which threatens to spill over into the region, and several worrying U.S. policy shifts that stand to have negative effects on their vulnerable economies.
Mottley has called an emergency virtual meeting for Friday to discuss the potential effects of a proposed Trump administration hike in port fees for China-linked ships going to the United States.
Trump is reportedly preparing to sign an executive order that would levy fines of up to $1.5 million on Chinese-made ships or vessels from fleets that include ships made in China. The proposal, which is already stoking fears in the U.S. agriculture market, is also causing concerns in the Caribbean, where leaders in recent weeks have been balking at other Trump policy initiatives, including threats to restrict U.S. visas for high-ranking government officials and nationals of six Caribbean countries including Cuba and Haiti under a new travel ban.
Last month Rubio announced that anyone anyone participating in Cuba’s medical missions, which deploy nurses and doctors to the Caribbean and elsewhere, risks having their U.S. visa canceled. This month the Herald reported that as part of a separate policy, Trump loyalists are weighing including Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and several Eastern Caribbean on a new expanded travel ban, in which some countries would face an absolute ban and others less harsh restrictions.
A State Department spokesperson said the agency had nothing to announce at this time about Rubio’s travel plans. The spokesperson also said the Department does not comment on internal deliberations or communications in response to the proposed travel ban.
Meanwhile, a State Department official defended the decision to impose the visa restrictions on those “responsible for or involved in forced labor elements of the Cuban regime’s exploitative labor export.”
“Cuba’s labor export program involves forced labor and exploitation of workers around the globe, enriches the Cuban regime, and treats Cuban doctors as commodities,” the official said.
The United States doesn’t have a problem with countries that pay a fair wage and respect worker rights, the official said.
“But for many recipient countries there are strong indicators of forced labor and other coercive elements in the program, including the retention of workers’ passports and medical credentials; withholding of workers’ wages; coercing workers into criminal activity by pressuring them to falsify medical records and fabricate procedures; abuse of workers’ vulnerability; coercive and deceptive recruitment practices; forced family separation and exile; restriction of workers’ movement, such as curfews and surveillance; intimidation and threats; excessive overtime and exhaustive work hours; and in many cases, unsafe and substandard work conditions,” the official said.
Caribbean leaders have insisted that they do not participate in forced labor. At the same time, at least one, The Bahamas’ prime minister, acknowledges that payments do not go directly to the doctors but to an agency in Havana.
The Cuban doctors sanction is one of several issues the Caribbean leaders are expected to raise in Jamaica along with concerns about the deteriorating crisis in Haiti. The inroads of armed gangs in recent weeks has led to the forced displacement of over 60,000 people in the capital in the last four weeks, the United Nations International Organization for Migration said this week.
Gangs have attacked prominent media outlets, destroyed schools and forced aid workers and diplomats to shelter in place while the few neighborhoods not under gang respond to the alarming violence by erecting barricades. The intensified attacks has many Haitians and some observers concerned that Port-au-Prince is days, if not hours, from collapsing.
Under the Biden administration, Caribbean leaders took a leading role in trying to help mediate the ongoing crisis in Haiti, which worsened after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. As the country’s most powerful gangs united a year ago, CARICOM and the Biden administration forced the resignation of then-Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, and in an emergency meeting held in Jamaica helped Haitians create a transitional government to restore stability and take the country to elections.
A year later, the transition has been plagued by corruption allegations, political infighting and a lack of strategy on battling gangs. Despite the presence of a Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission, gangs have tightened their grip and carried out some of the worst massacres in recent memory. Hospitals and schools have been burned and pillaged, and neighborhoods emptied out.
More than 5,600 people died last year in gang-related violence, according to the U.N., and over 1 million people are now internally displaced as criminal armed groups now control of close to 90% of Port-au-Prince. The escalating violence led the head of the Provisional Electoral Council last week to acknowledge that a planned referendum on a new constitution, scheduled to take place in May, will not happen.
In a sign of Haitians’ mounting anger and desperation, thousands took to the street on Wednesday in renewed demonstrations to protest against what they view as a lack of response from Haiti’s transitional authorities, who since last month have been unsuccessfully launching explosive drones to strike gang strongholds. Armed with machetes, protesters shouted slurs at government officials while attempting to head to the offices where the prime minister and members of the Transitional Presidential Council work. Police fired tear gas and several protesters were reportedly shot.
In a post on X, Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, finally breaking its silence, said Jean met on Thursday with the head of the Haiti National Police, Rameau Normil, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Derby Guerrier, the head of the Multinational Security Support Mission, Godfrey Otunge, and several other representatives of the security forces. Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who is in charge of overseeing security as head of the Superior Council of the National Police, was not in attendance.
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters in New York that the deteriorating situation is hindering access for surveillance teams and response efforts amid a concern about an outbreak of cholera.
Colleagues at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Haq said, are concerned as reports trickle in daily about new suspected cases of the waterborne disease.
“Since the beginning of the year, more than 900 suspected cases and four confirmed cases have been recorded nationwide,” he said. “In Cité Soleil, more than 100 suspected cases have been reported in the past three weeks. The deteriorating security situation hinders access for surveillance teams and response efforts, raising concerns about undetected community transmission.”
Friday’s agenda will also include discussions about the escalating border crisis between Guyana and Venezuela. While Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro has accused Ali of trying to start an armed conflict in the region, the U.S. earlier this month issued a stern warning to the Venezuelan leader following reports that a Venezuelan patrol boat had entered Guyanaese waters, threatening ExxonMobil’s offshore operations.
Advertise with the mоѕt vіѕіtеd nеwѕ ѕіtе іn Antigua!
We offer fully customizable and flexible digital marketing packages.
Contact us at antiguanewsroom@gmail.com
This little white boy coming down to the Caribbean to flex his authoritarian muscle and infantilized our so call leaders, you know they are moomoo leaders a mean dealers selling themselves and country.
I hope this will serve a real purpose and won’t be “kiss the ring likkle black boy.”