Trump tightens pressure on Maduro as virus crisis brews

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump is stepping up his campaign to oust Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro with the coronavirus pandemic and plunging oil prices threatening to worsen a humanitarian disaster years in the making.
The Trump administration says its restrictions don’t prohibit humanitarian aid from flowing to Venezuela, the same argument it makes when pressed about sanctions on Iran. As a result, it’s holding firm to its policies even as some world leaders, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, say it’s time to rethink sanctions to prevent the outbreak from worsening.
US officials argue that any easing would just strengthen Maduro’s seven-year grip on power, since they think he’d divert aid or cash to bolster allies, particularly in the military.
“The problem in trying to help Venezuela is you just don’t have an easy way to get the money to the people without helping the regime,” said Roberto Simon, senior director for policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. “There’s no question the Trump administration sees this as yet another opportunity to weaken the regime.”
There’s also little question that the situation on the ground in Venezuela is grim — and
has been for years. Even before the pandemic, the country’s broken healthcare system was losing a battle against traditional scourges such as measles and malaria, basic food and consumer goods were hard to obtain and inflation was the highest in the world. An estimated 5 million Venezuelans have fled the country in recent years.
The cononavirus’s impact on Venezuela so far isn’t clear. As of last week, Venezuela had just 146 confirmed cases, and five deaths. Those numbers understate the situation, just as they are believed to do in countries such as India, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
Human Rights Watch said last month that Venezuela had only 300 diagnostic tests available for a population of around
30 million, and that about 70% of Venezuela’s hospitals didn’t have any tests.
World Bank data from
2014, before the worst
of the economic crisis in Venezuela was even underway, said the country had 0.8 hospital beds for every 1,000 people, below an average in Latin America at the time of 2.2.
“The mortality rate will be a lot more severe in a country with no ICU capacity, no ventilators and a health system in such utter collapse that I just can’t imagine how they’ll be able to help patients with coronavirus,” said Kathleen Page, an expert on Venezuela’s public health system who teaches at Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine.
While some international agencies like the United Nations and the Red Cross have been granted safe conduct to operate in the country despite a nationwide lockdown that began on March 17, roadblocks set up by the armed forces have stopped the passage of medicine and aid for local efforts, and in some cases prevented them from accessing much needed fuel.
Some non-profits “have had many obstacles because they don’t have a safe-conduct to move freely or fill up their tanks,” said Rafael Uzcategui, general director of Provea, a human-rights organization based in Caracas.