quote:
The Bush administration has also sanctioned Venezuela for failing to effectively combat trafficking and stop supporting international loan requests for that country.
This article was referenced in another thread, and I caught this tidbit right at the end of it.
I find it singularly curious that the United States should be sideswiping Venezuela with this allegation when Colombia, by any stretch of the imagination, probably has a worse problem with human trafficking than Venezuela, with a functioning government that actually controls the entire country and not just two-thirds of it.
I got curious and started glumping around on google, and found a bunch of stuff.
Here's one report. The website seems to have a pro-opposition bias (It links to a website called "sixthrepublic.com"; Chavez's party, when it got into power, often speak of the country as "the Bolivarian Fifth Republic"), but they do link to external websites as well; this is a piece extracted from the New York Times that puts Venezuela's record into context.
It has also been noted that in all fairness many of Venezuela's problems do stem from Colombia's ongoing civil war and the consequent breakdown in public order in that nation.