The sanctions by the United States against the South American country Venezuela has been severely criticized by the heads of the United Nations Human Rights. The latest sanctions have been called as “extremely broad” and they have the potential to significantly increase suffering of the country’s people who are already reeling because of a collapsed economy and astronomical inflation.

Earlier concerns about the previous sanctions imposed by Washington against the government of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, had been expressed by Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights.

The administration of the United States president Donald Trump, in its latest sanctions against Venezuela, had ordered a complete freeze on all of the assets of the Venezuelan government in that are based in the US as well as barring all transactions with the authorities of the assets.

“I am deeply worried about the potentially severe impact on the human rights of the people of Venezuela of the new set of unilateral sanctions imposed by the US this week,” Bachelet said in a statement on Thursday.

“The sanctions are extremely broad and fail to contain sufficient measures to mitigate their impact on the most vulnerable sectors of the population.”

The latest sanctions however also included certain exceptions to allow for transactions that are related to certain food, clothing and medicine, said Bachelet, who is also a former president of another South American country Chile.

“However, they are still likely to significantly exacerbate the crisis for millions of ordinary Venezuelans,” she said.

It has been about three years that a devastating economic crisis has gripped the economy of Venezuela. It has not been able to monetize its vast riches of crude oil which was once its sources of wealth and the revenues earned from export of oil is critical for the survival of the Venezuelan economy. But that source of income for the country has virtually dried up due to paucity of funds to run the business. Additionally, there has also been political turmoil in the country as it has been in a political impasse since January. There has been political turmoil since  the speaker of the national assembly, Juan Guaidó, had declared himself to be the acting president of the country.

More than 50 countries, including the US, now recognize him to be the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

While criticizing the US sanctions, the actions of the Maduro’s government have also been criticized by Bachelet. There has been criticism worldwide of the violent crackdown on protests by the Venezuelan government.

Bachelet however also stressed that previous US sanctions imposed in 2017 and in January this year has even worsened the “dire crisis” in Venezuela.

(Adapted from TheGuardian.com)

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