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Venezuela claims sanctions blocking vaccine purchases

AFP/editor

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza claimed Wednesday that without economic sanctions against the government of President Nicolas Maduro, the country would already have purchased all 30 million coronavirus vaccines it needs.

The United States, one of many countries not to recognize Maduro’s reelection in 2018, has frozen millions of dollars of Venezuelan money in US bank accounts.

It views the election as fraudulent, and along with European and other countries recognizes opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s acting president.

Washington has handed control of the frozen funds to Guaido.

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“If Venezuela did not have its resources blocked we would have been able to buy the 30 million vaccines the country needs three months ago,” Arreaza said in an interview with AFP.

“As they are blocked, here we are.”

Venezuela has received 250,000 of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine doses to date, and half-a-million from China’s Sinopharm.

Health workers, teachers and government officials are first in line.

Guaido last month said he would allocate $30 million in the frozen funds towards vaccinations in Venezuela.

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Caracas is negotiating to buy more doses from the global Covax vaccine access program.

The director of the Emergency Health Department of the Pan American Health Organization, Ciro Ugarte, has said that “negotiations and talks continue and efforts to unblock Venezuela’s resources abroad are still in progress”. 

But no payment for Covax vaccines had yet been made, he said.

Like the rest of South America, Venezuela is battling a harsh new pandemic wave fueled, authorities say, by more infectious virus variants from Brazil. 

Officially, the country has had 165,000 cases and some 1,700 deaths, but observer groups such as Human Rights Watch question the numbers, which they say are likely vastly underestimated. 

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International

Venezuela Refuses to Repatriate Citizens Amid Tensions Over Chevron’s Departure

The government of Venezuela privately warned the government of Donald Trump that it will not accept its own citizens being deported, following the United States’ decision to end Chevron’s license to operate in the Caribbean country, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

The newspaper, citing sources familiar with the matter, notes that the Venezuelan repatriation agreement is becoming strained after a January meeting between Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell and the Chavista leader Nicolás Maduro, who is not recognized as president by the U.S. The Chevron issue has exacerbated tensions.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration ended Chevron’s license in Venezuela and gave the company a month, until April 3, to leave the country after President Trump criticized Maduro for not accelerating the deportation of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as quickly as expected.

The WSJ indicates that Venezuela’s private warning could further hinder Trump’s promised mass deportation campaignof undocumented immigrants, which his administration has already had to pause due to the high costs of using military planes for repatriation flights.

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International

Hearing suspended in Guatemala on revocation of José Rubén Zamora’s house arrest

Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín will know until next week if he should return to preventive detention, after this Friday the hearing was suspended for a possible revocation of his house arrest.

The resumption of the hearing was rescheduled for next Monday, at 10:00 local time (16:00 GMT), by order of criminal judge Erick García, since, as he indicated, he lacks the case file for the moment.

The possible return of Zamora Marroquín to prison is due to a case of alleged money laundering in 2022, the year in which the Public Ministry (Prosecution), whose leadership is sanctioned internationally under allegations of corruption, began a judicial prosecution against him.

The journalist’s potential return to prison takes place after this week an Appeals Chamber revoked the house arrest measures that had been granted since October 2024 to the former owner and founder of the media El Periódico, a morning in which he uncovered more than a thousand cases of state corruption.

According to the opinion of the magistrates of the Third Appeals Chamber, there was “an error” in the resolution of the judge who decided to release the journalist last year. The review of the measures was requested by the Prosecutor’s Office.

Zamora Marroquín was detained for the case for more than 800 days, between July 29, 2022 and October 2024, without his guilt being proven to date.

Before this Friday’s hearing, the journalist recalled in statements to the media that he has complied with all the court orders regarding his house arrest, and reiterated that he has not seen his family for more than two years, since they are abroad in the face of the risks they could encounter in the Central American country.

Likewise, he added that the persecution against him has been “physical and psychological but I am not going to give up” and described the Third Appeals Chamber as a court linked to the “corrupt” and Deputy Felipe Alejos, sanctioned by the United States for corruption.

Zamora Marroquín, with 30 years of journalistic career, was arrested on July 29, 2022, just five days after issuing strong criticism for corruption against then-President Alejandro Giammattei, between 2020 and 2024, and his close circle.

The journalist remained in prison for a judicial process for alleged money laundering, which according to international organizations such as the Inter-American Press Society (IAPA) has been plagued with irregularities.

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International

Trump withdraws 400 million federal funds from Columbia University for anti-Semitism

Donald Trump’s government canceled this Friday subsidies and contracts with Columbia University in New York worth 400 million dollars “due to its passivity in the face of the persistent harassment of Jewish students,” after receiving on Monday a report commissioned by the administration on anti-Semitism on the campuses of several universities in the country.

This cancellation “is the first set of actions, and new cancellations are expected,” warns a statement signed by the general administrative services, which specify that Columbia currently has 5 billion federally committed.

The decision to cut subsidies and contracts has been made together with the federal departments of Justice, Health, Education and Administrative Services, after the operational group commissioned by the government with the specific task of detecting and denouncing anti-Semitic behavior has not received a satisfactory response from Columbia, according to the statement.

Complaints of anti-Semitism began to appear in Columbia and other campuses shortly after October 7, 2023, the date on which Hamas launched a terrorist attack against Israel, which was then followed by a war declared by Israel against Gaza that has been one of the deadliest in several decades.

That war gave rise to demonstrations against Israel as they had not been seen on university campuses for fifty years, with Columbia at the spearhead, with some anti-Jewish incidents that made the Joe Biden Government intervene and summon the rectors of several universities to Congress, several of which (including Columbia’s) had to resign.

Despite the fact that the protests have dropped a lot in terms of intensity, Trump went further than Joe Biden: first, he named that operative group on anti-Semitism on campuses, and second, he threatened to withdraw visas or residence permits from students accused of supporting “terrorist organizations like Hamas.”

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon says that Columbia “for too long has left its homework with Jewish students on its campus, but today we show Columbia and the other universities that we will no longer tolerate that terrible passivity.”

And the director of the group that sent his report last Monday, Leo Torrell, abounded in the threats: “Freezing funds is one of the tools at our disposal to respond to this upsurge in anti-Semitism. This is just the beginning,” he said.

Curiously, in the protests against Israel, one of the most active groups has been the left-wing Jews, who have denounced that under the premise of anti-Semitism, legitimate political criticisms against the State of Israel are being included.

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