US imposes sanctions on 16 Venezuelan officials close to President Maduro
- In Reports
- 07:50 PM, Sep 13, 2024
- Myind Staff
The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on 16 Venezuelan officials aligned with President Nicolas Maduro, accusing them of hindering free and fair elections in that country. Thursday's action came over a month after Venezuela's presidential election and days after the opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, fled. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday, "This flight was the direct result of the anti-democratic measures that Nicolás Maduro has unleashed on the Venezuelan people, including against González Urrutia and other opposition leaders, since the election."
The new sanctions "target leaders of the Maduro-aligned National Electoral Council and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice who blocked a transparent electoral process and the publication of trustworthy election results, as well as military, intelligence, and government leaders involved in intensifying repression through intimidation, arbitrary detentions and censorship," a news release from the Treasury Department said. Those officials were all appointed by Maduro, who himself has been under sanction since 2017.
At the same time, the State Department "is imposing new visa restrictions on a number of Maduro-aligned officials who've undermined the electoral process in Venezuela and are responsible for acts of repression," said a senior administration official, according to reporters present at Thursday's briefing.
“We are taking these actions today because it has become abundantly clear to us not only that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s presidential election on July 28th, but also that Maduro and his representatives are intent on denying this fact, and instead seek to cling to power at all costs,” the official said.
The official said that the sanctions are an important step in shaping the overall context of the political trajectory in Venezuela. They set it within the context of the broad effort with partners to pressure Maduro to accept the outcome of the July 28 election. The US said Gonzalez was the candidate who received the most votes in that election but refused to formally recognise him as president-elect of Venezuela. Later, on Thursday, Venezuela responded to the sanctions "in the strongest terms", referring to them as "unilateral, illegitimate and illegal coercive measures."
“The wrongly designated ‘sanctions,’ which have been shamefully promoted by the fascist extreme right, break and violate agreements signed in Qatar and seek to impose on an entire country and its institutions policies of regime change as part of the Monroe Doctrine,” the Venezuelan foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
The official said, “There is clear evidence that Mr. González Urrutia won the most votes in this election, and therefore that fact needs to be respected and validated by Venezuelan authorities.” The US "has sanctioned over 140 Venezuelan individuals and 100 Venezuelan entities" in total, while it has levied sanctions "on nearly 2,000 Venezuelan individuals for their role in undermining democracy, significant corruption and human rights violations," the official said. These sanctions, nonetheless, did little to actually change Maduro's behaviour.
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