The Venezuelan government is reporting potential victims of COVID-19 as “bioterrorists”, and wounded experimenters and doctors who contradict their official line against coronavirus.
Nicolás Maduro’s government is also cracking down on Venezuelans who have been abroad, fearing they could become contagious, according to The New York Times.
The returning Venezuelans are being held in hotels, schools and bus stations, under military guard, with limited access to food, water and personal protective equipment, the Times reported.
One Venetian nurse returning from Colombia told the newspaper that she had been held for 70 days.
The Maduro regime has tightened border security since its inception, combating smuggling of goods that are in short supply, and labeling Venezuela’s markers who return via unofficial paths as “troncheros.”
A Twitter account carried out by the Venezuelan army last month said troncheros were “bio-terrorists”, asking people to report the smugglers to authorities.
DIFFERENCE FROM THE NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AND THE FAMILY!
A thief is a Bio-Terrorist, who risks the health of all.
Send a message to the e-mail, with the person’s dates and exact location.
⚠️#DenuncieAlBioterrorista #CEOFANB #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/oqI8mavWo1
– @ceofanb (@ Libertad020) 14 July 2020
If caught, the troncheros placed in internment are treated with drugs not recommended by the World Health Organization for the treatment of coronavirus, according to the Times. The drugs include hydroxychloroquine, which has been peddled as a COVID-19 cure by world leaders and others. President Trump
Donald John TrumpThe Memo: Democrats pitch Biden as the back-to-normal candidate Obama congratulates Biden with formal nomination Jill Biden gives personal portrait of man Joe MORE and the leaders of Brazil and El Salvador, and ivermectin.
The crash is part of a coronavirus policy apparently designed to hide all evidence of the pandemic in the embedded South American country, rather than a strategy of genuine containment.
Venezuela has reported fewer than 300 COVID-19 deaths, a number that is almost certainly a fraction of the real total.
According to the new report, the official death toll is about 70 in just one hospital in the state of Zulia, but a group of doctors in the state say 294 people have died in that hospital from the disease.
Due to the lack of transparency of the government, both death statistics and infection numbers have become unreliable. Officially, Venezuela has had less than 15,000 cases of coronavirus, a tenth of the same size, neighboring Colombia.
And given the government’s attacks on potential victims of the disease, private citizens also report no potential transmission, for fear of reprisals.
“When people feel sick, they think they have a legal problem rather than a police problem, just as if they were criminals,” Venezuelan doctor Julio Castro told the Times. “They’d rather hide that.”
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