Two weeks ago, when aid in form of food reached the Venezuelan population via trucks, they were attacked and sent back. Also attacked were volunteers who tried to help with the drive. As a result now, many Venezuelans are stuck on other side of the border in Colombia. Even as the push and pull between Maduro and his opponent Guaido continues, people suffering from starvation may not have much energy left to decide their own fate.
And in light of this, UN human rights team has decided to send a team to the country. The visit comes post an invite from the government. It will pave way for a future visit by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
“The team will seek to meet with Government officials, representatives of the National Assembly, civil society organisations and victims of human rights violations,” said Bachelet's official statement. Venezuela's foreign minister Jorge Arreaza invited Bachelet to visit his country in an address to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week.
Venezuela has been gripped by a devastating political crisis and economic meltdown, which the United States and other countries blame on what they describe as the misrule of President Nicolas Maduro. The US has led a diplomatic campaign in support of opposition leader Juan Guaido who has declared himself interim president and is recognised by about 50 countries, notably within the EU.
Bachelet, the former president of Chile, has been critical of Maduro's government but this week also said that economic sanctions pushed for by Washington have “exacerbated” the crisis.
Tensions escalate as power outage engulfs the state in darkness
In the meantime, even as tensions rose in Venezuela, much of the country faced a blackout for most of Friday. The outage hit 22 of the 23 states. It also struck the capital Caracas.
At the darkened maternity ward at the Avila Clinic in wealthy eastern Caracas, several mothers cried as nurses holding candles monitored the vital signs of premature babies in incubators after backup generators shut off.
Normally hyperactive social media was eerily silent as much of the country was knocked offline.
The outage comes as Venezuela is in the throes of a political struggle between Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido, the head of congress who declared himself the nation's rightful president in January and is recognized by the United States and about 50 nations.
Guaido took to Twitter to blast Maduro for the outage.
«How do you tell a mom who needs to cook, an ill person who depends on a machine, a worker who should be laboring that we are in a powerful country without electricity?» he wrote, using the hashtag #SinLuz, meaning without light.
“Venezuela is clear that the light will return with the end of usurpation”.
The government keeps home power bills exceptionally low just a couple dollars a month relying heavily on subsidies from the Maduro administration, which is under increasing financial duress.
Venezuela is currently is experiencing hyperinflation projected to reach a mind-boggling 10 million per cent this year; coupled with food and medical shortages. Owing to this, it has lost about 10 per cent of its population to migration in the past few years.
Venezuela's economic woes are likely to increase as US sanctions against its oil industry kick in.
State-owned electricity operator Corpoelec blamed the outage on act of “sabotage” at the Guri Dam, one of the world's largest hydroelectric stations.