The Venezuelan community in Peru is planning to mobilize this coming week to take advantage of the 8th Summit of the Americas, which is scheduled to take place in Lima from April 13 to the 14. The expatriates plan to hold a march to coincide with the start of the summit in order to call attention to the Venezuelan crisis and ask that the Maduro regime allow humanitarian aid to flow into the country.
Former National Assembly deputy Oscar Perez, who now lives in Peru and is a member of an NGO called Union Venezolana [Venezuelan Union], announced today that the march will take place on Thursday, April 12. The march will begin in Lima’s Palace of Justice, and will then head to the San Martin Plaza, which is located in the city’s historical centre.
Perez said that the goal of the march would be to call attention to the Maduro regime’s authoritarianism, and to put pressure on Caracas to:
… allow [for the opening of] a humanitarian channel to allow for the prompt deliver of medicine and food to prevent the people of Venezuela from starving to death.
While Maduro was invited to attend the summit in November, Lima withdrew its invitation in February in response to his naked authoritarianism. While Maduro initially vowed to attend the summit anyway, he finally conceded three days ago that he would not be attending. Maduro made his change of heart known during a televised speech in which he said:
For me, it’s not a priority to go [to Lima]. You know, the Summit of the Americas are a terrible waste of time.
Minister of Health: There Is No Medical Crisis
Just one day after the Maduro regime took the unprecedented step of accepting humanitarian aid from Russia in the form of medical supplies, Minister of Health Luis Lopez denied that there is a healthcare crisis in Venezuela. Lopez made the comments publicly yesterday, while reading a list of the regime’s supposed healthcare achievements.
While citing figure after figure, Lopez belittled the argument that the country is suffering from a lack of medical equipment and medicine by saying:
We’ve opened 261 surgery rooms that [carry out] integral [operations] to increase capacity at the public health sector by more than 40,000 people. We’ve carried out 440,900 surgeries and there’s been an increase of 52% when it comes to high-complexity surgeries. How can anyone say, then, that there are no materials or surgical equipment in our country?
Lopez’s comments stand in direct contradiction to repeated claims by the Venezuelan medical experts highlighting the dire state of the country’s healthcare system, as well as to direct evidence from a myriad of sources demonstrating unequivocally the severity of the sector’s collapse.
Regime Restores Contact with ABC Islands
Three months after Maduro ordered an end to all contact with the islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, the regime announced the restoration of relations late yesterday.The measure means that all air and sea contact with the islands is now open once again.
The announcement came from vice president Tareck El Aissami, who stood alongside Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Stef Blok in Caracas when he said:
Starting today we will take every avenue to regularize and normalize all of the aerial and maritime communication with these islands.
El Aissami said that after meeting with Blok, “all of the difficulties that have presented themselves” between Venezuela and the Netherlands were resolved.
For his part, Blok said:
It is important to maintain and open dialogue at all times, even when the circumstances are difficult.
Back on January 9, Maduro abruptly ordered an end to all contact with the ABC islands. Maduro claimed at the time that the measure was taken in order to put an end to the “brutal contraband” that he claims emanates from the islands.
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