CARACAS, Feb 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Opposition leader Juan Guaido, recognized by some 50 countries as Venezuela’s interim president, warned the military Sunday that blocking humanitarian aid from entering the country is a “crime against humanity.”
The warning comes as international aid has taken center stage in a test of
wills between Guaido and President Nicolas Maduro in which Venezuela’s armed forces are seen as the pivotal player.
Medicine and food sent by the United States has been blocked for three days
on the border in Cucuta, Colombia after Venezuelan soldiers closed a bridge
linking the two countries.
On the Venezuelan side of the border, dozens of doctors protested Sunday
demanding the aid be allowed in — including surgeon Jose Luis Mateus de la Riva, who accused Maduro of sinking Venezuelan medicine back to the “medieval era.”
“There are people responsible for this and the regime should know it,”
Guaido said after attending Sunday mass with his wife and 20-month-old baby. “This a crime against humanity, men of the armed forces.”
Accusing those blocking aid of being “almost genocidal,” he likewise warned that the military would be held responsible for the deaths of protesters — and reaffirmed his call for a mass march on Tuesday in memory of the estimated 40 people killed in disturbances since January 21.
Guaido has offered amnesty for any members of the armed forces who disavows Maduro — but the military leadership still publicly backs the president.
On Sunday, the Venezuelan military announced it had started conducting
exercises, set to run until Feb 15 across the country, to “reinforce the
country’s defensive capacity.”
Maduro has rejected humanitarian aid as a US ploy to intervene in
Venezuela, calling the deployment of aid a “political show” and blaming US
sanctions for the country’s widespread shortages of food and medicine.
Guaido countered that the regime was refusing to acknowledge a “crisis that they themselves generated,” while Venezuelans were working to deal with the humanitarian emergency.
He said hundreds of volunteers had signed up over the weekend to help bring aid into Venezuela — with further shipments set to
arrive in neighboring Brazil and on a Caribbean island.
Suffering the worst crisis of its modern history, Venezuelans have had to
grapple with life-threatening scarcities amid eye-popping levels of
hyperinflation that have rendered salaries and savings worthless.
According to the United Nations, some 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled the
country since 2015. — NNN-AGENCIES
