US denies visas to Prensa Latina United Nations correspondents

The Latin American News Agency Prensa Latina denounced Monday as an outrageous act the decision by the United States government to deny re-entry visas to its two United Nations correspondents after they spent their holidays in Cuba.

A statement issued in Havana by the news agency Board of Directors says that Ilsa Rodriguez Santana and her husband Tomas Anael Granados Jimenez had been working as foreign correspondents formally and officially accredited to the United Nations for the last three years. Rodriguez Santana and Granados Jimenez have been working with Prensa Latina for four decades. The two of them are senior journalists with previous experiences as news correspondents in India, Zimbabwe, China and New York. According to Prensa Latina, such an outrageous act bluntly violates their rights as correspondents of an international news agency whose presence at the United Nations dates back from almost half a century.

The visa denial also shows the United States' open disdain for journalism and the universal human right of informing and being informed, while not fulfilling its duty as host to the United Nations main headquarters, the statement said.