Venezuela Accuses Colombia Of Diverting Funds For Migrants

Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Minister Felix Plasencia denounced that President Ivan Duque’s administration defrauded the international community by diverting humanitarian assistance funds that should have been used on Venezuelan migrants.

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“We publicly denounce the Government of Ivan Duque for aggravated fraud against the international community. We request a transparent audit that shows where millions of dollars really went,” Plasencia said during the 112th Council of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

In this multilateral meeting, he stressed that migrants do not receive adequate guarantees for their permanence in host countries. In Colombia, for example, the rights of Venezuelan migrants have been repeatedly violated.

Plasencia also denounced that a significant increase in acts of xenophobia, discrimination, and racism against Venezuelan migrants has occurred in Colombia "under Mister Ivan Duque's inert gaze."

Venezuelan migrants have been victims of aggressive criminalization campaigns that seek to "divert attention" from the host countries' internal social and economic crises.

The Bolivarian diplomat stressed that his nation has never requested "undue gifts" from international organizations using the dignity of migrants or the politicization of other countries' internal affairs as a negotiating instrument.

Plasencia also called for the lifting of all illegal unilateral coercive measures affecting human rights, condemned the persecution of migrants at any border and within host countries, and ratified the will of President Nicolas Maduro's administration to "continue advancing in the construction of a better world where we all smile at life and the future."