Venezuela: International Media is Trying to 'Distort Reality'

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez denounced this Thursday that international media were looking to “scam” the world over what is happening on the border between Venezuela and Colombia.

“The transnational media is trying to distort reality,” she said during during her speech at an international human rights conference in Caracas. “Venezuela isn't violating the human rights of our Colombian brothers and sisters.”

The conference titled “International Human Rights on the Border: Implications of the Mass Colombian Exodus” took place on Thursday at the Teresa Carreño theater.

She highlighted that since President Nicolas Maduro decreed a state of exception in August to combat the crime, paramilitarism, and contraband affecting Venezuela, mainstream media have attempted to misrepresent the reality on the border.

RELATED: Paramilitaries in Venezuela

A lot of media have reported on the repatriations of over 1,000 undocumented Colombians on the Venezuelan border back to Colombia, stating that this was a violation of human rights. They have, however, ignored the crime, youth prostitution, and paramilitarism that was discovered by the Venezuelan military in the area during border operations, which was the impetus of the repatriations.

There has also been very little mention in the mainstream media of the fact that Venezuela has received more than 5 million Colombians over the country’s half-century long internal conflict.

“They are trying to sell a great lie to the world,” said Rodriguez. “Maduro has closed the border with Colombia in order to contain the paramilitary threat … And this paramilitarism has penetrated the structures of the Venezuelan opposition.”

Rodriguez remembered the assassination of the Venezuelan National Assembly representative Robert Serra, who was killed last year by paramilitaries in Caracas.

RELATED: Shortages, Smuggling and Paramilitaries in Venezuela

During her speech, Rodriguez highlighted that the Venezuelan constitution guarantees the human rights of all people, and she called on the world to “reflect on the causes of world migration … not just in Colombia, which has one of the highest levels of forced displacement.”

In Rodriguez’s speech, she cited statistics from international organizations that in 2014 there were 60 million displaced people in the world who did not have access to basic human rights.

“Let us come together to act against the causes,” she said. “This is a humanitarian crisis ... as a result of the crisis of an economic model that is not sustainable.”