BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Venezuelans who have fled their country’s economic crisis and have been forced to return in despair are accused of spreading the coronavirus and are being classified as bioterrorists, the head of a major medical organization said Wednesday.
More than 70,000 Venezuelans have returned home since April, some walking thousands of miles, according to the United Nations, after blockades, job losses and business closures ended the opportunities they were looking for in Latin America.
Political and economic unrest in Venezuela, which the UN calls a humanitarian crisis, has led more than five million people to flee since 2014, many of whom have sought refuge in neighboring Colombia, Peru and Chile.
When they return, they are discriminated against and accused of being bioterrorists, said Jaime Lorenzo, holder of Doctors United Venezuela in Caracas, in an assembly organized through the charity CARE.
Returnees arrested at the border and others who tested positive are regularly forced to quarantine hotels or sports fields where situations are “inhumane,” he said.
“We have tried to break this attempt to stigmatize a user who comes from countryArray …and that’s not to blame,” Lorenzo said.
Doctors United Venezuela, an organization of doctors and fitness workers, criticized the government’s reaction to COVID-19 and hospital conditions.
Government-run hospitals have power outages and lack water, protective appliances and cleaning products,” Lorenzo said.
Healthcare staff made their own cloth mask or a single-use mask reused for up to two weeks, Lorenzo said.
Nurses earn about $5 a month and a doctor starts at about $14 a month, leaving them cash after paying for housing, food and transportation, he said.
“Doctors and fitness pay to get to work,” said Lorenzo, an experienced surgeon.
The Venezuelan government has responded to a request for feedback on the fitness formula and reaction to coronaviruses.
According to government figures, some 280 Venezuelans died of COVID-19 and about 35,000 more people became infected.
Lorenzo that government coronavirus accounting distinguishes between “imported cases” and “community transmission cases,” stigmatizing returnees.
In a televised confrontation in July, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused migrants returning on illegal roads across the border with Colombia of spreading COVID-19.
“They’re polluting communities, they’re killing their families,” Maduro said.
In May, Lysander Cabello, secretary of the regional government, said the returnees were “biological weapons” sent through Colombia to contaminate Venezuela.
Reporting through Anastasia Moloney; Edited through Ellen Wulfhorst.Thank you for mentioning the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Thomson Reuters’ charitable arm, which covers the lives of others around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly.Visit http://news.trust.org
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