U.S., Canada suffocating Venezuela

Re: “Venezuelans need all the help they can get,” comment, March 12.

What is surprisingly absent from the discourse on human-rights violations in Venezuela is the testimony from the human rights investigator designated by the UN to assess that crisis. Alfred de Zayas’s report was distributed at the UN General Assembly on Aug. 3, 2018.

De Zayas states the hardships being experienced by the Venezuelan people are a direct result of illegal economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and others.

“The effects of sanctions imposed by presidents [Barack] Obama and [Donald] Trump, and unilateral measures by Canada and the European Union have directly and indirectly aggravated the shortages in medicines such as insulin and antiretroviral drugs. To the extent that economic sanctions have caused delays in distribution and thus contributed to many deaths, sanctions contravene the human rights obligations of the countries imposing them. Moreover, sanctions can amount to crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

“The democratically elected government of Venezuela is being suffocated through external economic warfare.” It appears the U.S. intends to create a situation in which the people or the military will topple the government and prepare the path for the one per cent to acquire what might be the largest oil reserves remaining on the planet.

The U.S., Canada and others named in the report are directly responsible for the current situation in Venezuela, and the fact these governments are using the resulting crisis to overthrow the legitimate government is not only illegal, it is immoral.

C.W. Wrench Victoria