Brazil posts troops on border with Venezuela
Brazil is sending in troops to restore order on its border with Venezuela, after locals clashed with refugees fleeing their country’s economic collapse. Residents in the state of Roraima have rioted and attacked immigrants in recent weeks. President Michel Temer said his decision to deploy troops would keep order and ensure the safety of the immigrants. As a result of the crisis in Venezuela, 700 to 800 people are crossing into Brazil every day.
BRAZIL is sending in troops to restore order in a troubled border state where locals and Venezuelan refugees fleeing their country’s economic collapse have clashed violently.
Residents in the state of Roraima, where most of the Venezuelans cross the border, have rioted and attacked immigrants in recent weeks.
President Michel Temer said that his decision to deploy the Brazilian armed forces in the region was aimed at keeping order and ensuring the safety of the immigrants. The situation in Roraima has become increasingly fraught in recent months.
Its homicide rate spiked this year and is now the highest in Brazil.
As a result of the crisis in Venezuela, 700 to 800 Venezuelans are entering Brazil every day.
Mr Temer said the authorities were discussing limiting that to between 100 and 200 as the border state struggles to cope with the influx.
“The problem of Venezuela is no longer one of internal politics. It is a threat to the harmony of the whole continent,” the president said in a televised address.
More than 50,000 Venezuelans, many of whom are hungry or sick and have little or no money and belongings, have applied for refugee or resident status in Brazil in recent years.
Authorities in Roraima say that the federal government needs to do more to help them deal with the growing problems.
Just over a week ago, residents of Pacaraima, a border town in Roraima, hurled rocks at Venezuelans and set fire to their belongings after migrants were blamed for an attack on a local store owner.
Around 1,200 were driven back across the border by the violence.
But one Venezuelan who has lived in the area since 2015 and now works with an aid agency said that, despite the difficulties, Brazil was still a better option than Venezuela for many.
“We are coming from a country that’s very violent right now,” Alba Marina told The Daily Telegraph.
Roraima’s state government has tried a few times to shut the border to stem the influx, but the federal govern-
ment and courts have so far pushed to keep it open.
Since 2014, an estimated 2.3million Venezuelans have fled their country’s growing humanitarian crisis, including shortages of food and medicine, according to the United Nations. Some countries, such as Peru and Colombia, see thousands enter each day, and the stream of migrants has strained the resources of countries around the region.
Peru has declared a 60day health emergency in two provinces on its northern border, citing “imminent danger” to health and sanitation as a result of the migration crisis.
The decree did not give more details on the risks, but the health authorities have previously expressed concerns about the spread of diseases.
Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist president, has insisted Venezuelans should stop leaving and return to their homeland, which he described as the “country of opportunity”.
Over two million citizens have fled in just three years. The country’s economy has suffered a collapse greater than the US Depression in the Twenties, with hyperinflation and food shortages making life intolerable for those who remain. Violence is endemic, as is corruption. The regime agitates against external enemies and uses force to crush internal dissent.
The country is Venezuela, once the richest in South America but which now resembles a failed state such as Syria – and is suffering from a humanitarian crisis just as tragic. Brazil has sent its army to the border to keep order as thousands of refugees seek to cross it, while other South American countries have imposed restrictions on entry. Some Venezuelans have even resorted to escaping perilously across the Caribbean, and an international relief effort may soon be required to stop the state from imploding.
None of this is the consequence of a civil war or conflict, but the socialist policies enacted by the regime of President Nicolas Maduro. Socialists, when confronted with evidence of their ideology’s failure, tend to reply that socialism has not failed, only the people putting it into practice. So Leftwing supporters of the Venezuelan regime predictably attribute blame to mismanagement, the fall in the oil price, or even to “economic warfare” by the government’s enemies.
The truth is otherwise. Artificial price fixing has led to shortages of essential products and a booming black market. Political nepotism has resulted in vast corruption in state-run companies and the ludicrous situation of a nation with the world’s largest oil reserves importing oil. Money printing has created extreme inflation, while the undermining of private property has driven out investors and destroyed the incentive for domestic firms to continue in business.
Some Venezuelans remain loyal to Mr Maduro, who, like his predecessor Hugo Chavez, has in the socialist style created a client state, replete with cosseted apparatchiks. But the cost has been high, not least for a once-prosperous middle class, now driven abroad, impoverished.
Presumably this is not what Jeremy Corbyn had in mind when he described Venezuela under Chavez as an “inspiration to all of us fighting back against austerity and neoliberal economics in Europe”. But how would he ensure that his own socialist policies would perform any better?