Costa Rica’s former leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Óscar Arias has said his US visa was revoked without explanation, weeks after he criticised US President Donald Trump.
Arias was informed this week via email by the US State Department that “information has come to light that you may be ineligible for your visa”.
The email said that Arias would have to re-apply for a visa if he wanted to travel to the US.
The 84-year-old said on Wednesday that he did not know why his visa was revoked, but acknowledged that Washington may not have appreciated his comments on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US’ commercial conflict with China or Israel’s war in Gaza.
Arias — who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to end civil wars in Central America — recently compared Trump’s behaviour to that of a Roman emperor.
“It has never been easy for a small country to disagree with the US government, and even less so, when its president behaves like a Roman emperor, telling the rest of the world what to do,” Arias said in a social media post in February.
His comments on social media came after the US revoked the visas of three Costa Rican lawmakers who opposed a decree by President Rodrigo Chaves to exclude Chinese firms from the country’s 5G networks, a move demanded by Washington.
This week, another opposition politician in the Central American nation had her US visa revoked.
Speaking on Wednesday — shortly after Trump announced a wave of tariffs against dozens of its trading partners, including a 10% duty on imports from Costa Rica — Arias denounced the decision and said it made no sense.
“History proves it,” said Arias, who was president of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990 and again between 2006 and 2010.
“You can empirically analyse that those countries with more open economies and more free trade are the ones that have grown more and have been able to improve in little time.”
Costa Rica’s former president also said he was not losing any sleep over Washington’s decision to revoke his visa.
“The United States already gave me 93 honorary degrees,” he said.
“They aren’t going to give me any more. The main reason for my trips (to the US) was to receive those doctorates. I would have preferred this didn’t happen because I admire that country, I admire its people,” Arias added.
