Speaking at the end of the ceremony to hand over the Voice of America (VOA) radio facilities in the country to the São Tomé government, Noah Zaring stressed that "no announcement" had been made by the United States government regarding restrictions on visas granted to 36 countries, including 25 African countries, including Angola, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe.
Referring to the information being reported by the media, the diplomat admitted that "internal discussions" were taking place, which he said he could not comment on at this time.
In an article published on Monday, the Washington Post cited a memorandum from the US State Department, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which was reportedly sent on Saturday to US diplomats working with the 36 targeted countries.
The memorandum indicates that the administrations of the targeted states will have 60 days to comply with the new requirements established by the State Department.
According to the Washington Post, countries were given until Wednesday to submit an initial action plan to meet the requirements.
The memorandum identifies several criteria that, in the US government's assessment, were not being met by these states.
Some countries had "no competent or cooperative central government authority to produce reliable identity documents or other civil documents", or suffered from "widespread government fraud", and others had a large number of citizens who had overstayed their visas in the United States.
The document also points out that these concerns could be alleviated if a government were willing to accept third-country citizens who were expelled from the United States. These 36 states could join 12 others that had their citizens' entry restricted to US soil earlier this month.
So far, none of the targeted Portuguese-speaking countries have reacted to the news, and one of the sources contacted by Lusa stated that no formal communication to that effect had yet been made.
At the ceremony to hand over VOA facilities to the São Tomé government by the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Noah Zaring stated that this radio station "was important for distributing" the American message "throughout Africa," but stressed that currently, information is shared on other networks and in other formats.
Zaring assured that the United States will "continue to disseminate" information to São Tomé and Príncipe, as well as to the rest of the continent, but in other ways, mainly online, through the staff it has in the embassies. "We know that many listeners followed VOA's programs mainly in Portuguese.
What will change for these listeners and also for the presence of the United States of America in the region?" asked the American representative rhetorically, who indicated that the restructuring of VOA is due to measures taken by the Trump administration.
In turn, the Minister of State for Economy and Finance of São Tomé, Gareth Guadalupe, mentioned the "symbolic and historic moment" of the ceremony, emphasizing that it brings to an end a cycle of active presence of VOA in the country, marked "by more than two or three decades of cooperation, dissemination of plural information and a technical presence that knew how to honor the principles of public service and freedom of the press".
For Gareth Guadalupe, who remembered all the workers who have worked for VOA in recent years, this is "not the end", but "the beginning of a new chapter of cooperative relations between São Tomé and Príncipe and the United States of America".
