Assembly of Caribbean People: US sanctions will further hurt V’zuela

THE Assembly of Caribbean People has expressed “dismay and outrage” at the latest US sanctions against Venezuela saying the sanctions would not only create more hardship for the Venezuelan people but also have a direct impact on TT and the region.In a media release yesterday, the assembly said the sanctions, which were contained in an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on Monday, blocks all property and assets of the government and prohibits any transactions with them, including the Venezuelan Central Bank and the state oil company, PDVSA.The BBC reports that the move “ramps up the pressure on President (Nicolas) Maduro by not only targeting his government's assets in the US but also the individuals, companies and countries doing business with his government.”“It means that Venezuela will face many of the US restrictions on Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria,” the BBC reported.The assembly said this “will create more hardship for the people of Venezuela that will have a direct impact on TT because contrary to what Trump is saying, those sanctions target the ordinary people of Venezuela, and it will hurt the Venezuelan people.“Those assets are not personal, individual assets, its state assets that these people seized in the US, it’s like theft.”The assembly said this was a move “calculated to cause increasing harm to a nation that is already under siege.”And in a telephone interview, asked whether this would also affect PDVSA, the assembly’s local organising committee chairman Ozzi Warwick said, “It will hugely affect PDVSA, it will create real hardship for ordinary Venezuelan people as if they are not under enough hardship.”“The difficulties that you see in Venezuela has to do with sanctions. It is the sanctions that is creating the suffering and the hardship, these sanctions are simply a strategy to engage in regime change and we cannot as a region that has known peace for so many years since the 1983 invasion of Grenada, we can’t have regime change taking place in our region.”He cited the volatile Middle East region as an example of regime change saying several nations- Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan- have been brought to their knees because of regime change.”“Do we really want that in our region?”The assembly is a “conference that brings together Caribbean people across the lines that divide us.”The conference is expected to be held here from August 15-18.