Alberto Fernández believes that Venezuela’s human rights problem “was disappearing”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, affirmed this Tuesday that “little by little” the “problem” of human rights in Venezuela “was disappearing”, and once again defended dialogue as a way to solve the serious crisis in that country.

“There is a way to solve the problems that do not involve interfering in the countries, neither in an armed way nor with political pressures of blockade”, said the Argentine president in declarations to Radio 10.

In his Europe tour last week, “in all the conversations” with the countries’ leaders he met with, “the subject of Latin America was present”.

“I had been there a year and a half ago, and when they talked to me, they told me about what was happening in Bolivia, Venezuela, in Cuba… and I was frankly giving them my point of view”, he said, adding that “now they observe that Venezuela is following a similar path” to the one he told them then. They warn with concern that the blockade to Cuba is already “unsustainable and inhuman”.

THAT THE VENEZUELANS “SOLVE THE PROBLEM”

The Argentine president confessed that his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, congratulated and thanked him for “all his efforts for peace in Venezuela and for democracy and institutionality to function fully” in the Caribbean nation.

“I felt that Macron began to realize that what I was telling him was true about what was the way, that the way to solve the Venezuelan issue was not to block Venezuela, it was to get the Venezuelans to find a dialogue, and they solve the problem,” he stressed.

And then, Fernandez recalled that “many leftists” had criticized him because he supported the report in which the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, “marked actions of the Venezuelan government that violated human rights”.

“But I also worked to help Bachelet to install a permanent office in Venezuela, to follow up on the functioning of human rights in Venezuela, and little by little that problem in Venezuela, little by little it disappeared”, he said.

REPUDIATION OF GUAIDÓ’S REPRESENTATIVE IN ARGENTINA

Elisa Trotta, a representative in Argentina of Venezuelan oppositionist Juan Guaidó -who had been recognized as president in charge of the country during the Argentine government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019)- showed on Twitter her rejection of Fernández’s statements.

“We repudiate the recent statements made by President Alberto Fernández, where he assured that ‘the human rights problem has been disappearing’ in Venezuela. It is a false statement that, in addition, means an offense to the tens of thousands of victims of the criminal dictatorship of (Nicolás) Maduro,” Trotta wrote.

“It is also false, President @alferdez, that there is a blockade against Venezuela. There are sanctions against corrupt criminals and drug traffickers. If you read data and studies, instead of listening to members of the dictatorship, this point would be clear,” he remarked.