Nicolás Maduro’s police have raided the headquarters of humanitarian organizations and imprisoned some of their workers, while the United Nations (UN) cut funding for NGOs and Parliament is preparing norms to regulate them. Those who help those most in need in Venezuela have no doubt: they are under attack.
All this has happened in a matter of weeks, in which the ruling Chavismo raised the tone against non-governmental organizations, turned into enemies of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, according to the official discourse.
The cornering also occurs just when 80% of the population is in extreme poverty Or, as the UN puts it, millions of Venezuelans have urgent humanitarian needs.
“We consider that continuing the harassment and criminalization of humanitarian aid has only one injured party: people“Luis Francisco Cabezas, director of the NGO Convite, an entity that helps poor elderly people, told Efe that was the subject of a police operation in mid-December.
After that episode, which ended with Cabezas giving a statement at a police headquarters, Convite was able to recover the equipment that had been confiscated from them in the middle of the raid, because – the director of that organization says – they have not incurred any illegality helping 25,000 people in the last 15 years.
However, the activist believes that this type of action makes it “increasingly difficult” the work to deploy the humanitarian response plan approved by the UN, which contemplated 762 million dollars for the year 2020 alone.
United Nations, Cabezas explains, “does not have the capabilities” in Venezuela to distribute all that aid and that is why it works with dozens of local NGOs that have “links with the communities” and are those that assist the most disadvantaged in issues such as food, water, energy, sexual and reproductive rights, among others.
Less assistance
María Elena Morán feels “very disappointed in the Government”. The 51-year-old grandmother, who lives in extreme poverty, reproaches the Executive and not the Justice that five humanitarian workers are today behind bars, in the western state of Zulia, where she resides with her family.
The quintet, members of the organization Azul Positivo, has become a symbol of the affront denounced by the Venezuelan NGOs, after they were arrested and later accused of crimes such as criminal association and money laundering.
María Elena insists, like many human rights organizations, that these people are innocent and warns that with their work they helped “calm the waters”, alluding to the assistance they provided in deeply impoverished communities in that region.
“Positive Blue has been a window to forgotten neighborhoods, those who go hungry, needs (…) I have been a beneficiary on three occasions, I have received bags of food, very expensive food that I have not had “, says the woman.
The arrests and accusations that humanitarian actors have suffered ended up joining these organizations that see in the latest actions a government that does not want the information to be known or disclosed. “Dramatic current situation of Venezuelans”, or at least that’s how Rafael Uzcátegui, director of the NGO Provea, considers it.
“Now, in 2021, an attempt is being made to silence the voices of civil society, who are going to continue talking about what is happening in Venezuela, we are talking about the media, journalists, social leaders and human rights defenders”, argues the sociologist.
With the same vehemence, dozens of humanitarian workers and local organizations they have manifested, with street protests and numerous messages on social networks, to demand that what they consider a judicial and governmental persecution to cease.
Crusade
In this crusade, local NGOs have had the partial support of the UN, which, on the one hand, has joined the voices calling for the activists released detained in Zulia and, on the other hand, it suspended the monetary transfer program with which thousands of families received money for basic expenses.
Although the United Nations assures that this decision only affects a “reduced percentage” of the humanitarian response plan, the defenders allege that it is about thousands of Venezuelans who had their only livelihood taken away.
On the other side of the story, Chavismo, which now exercises power from Parliament, has offered new legislation to sanction Venezuelan NGOs that they receive money from the United States, arguing that they are part of the conspiracy against the Government of Nicolás Maduro.
This has been said on several occasions by the head of the ruling party, Diosdado Cabello, according to who these organizations are “capable of carrying out coups”.
Although the scope of this eventual law is unknown until now, Cabezas predicts that, due to this siege and all the pressures, some humanitarian workers “are going to end up being victims of fear”, while the organizations will experience desertions of personnel, will reorient their actions or they will stop working.
This, he stresses, would leave more than 10 million Venezuelans with less opportunity to be assisted and, cases like that of Paola, a young mother of five children, who was also a beneficiary of Azul Positivo in Zulia, will multiply and translate into more hunger and life in poverty.
Hector Pereira. EFE Agency
PB
source https://pledgetimes.com/humanitarian-aid-in-venezuela-under-attack-by-nicolas-maduros-police/
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