MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

OAS calls for peaceful solution to Venezuelan crisis

“The 'peace' of repression, fear, and terror is not peace,” the OAS argued

The Organization of American States (OAS) General Secretariat issued a statement Saturday hoping for a peaceful solution to the ongoing political crisis in Venezuela.

”The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) calls for peace among Venezuelans, for today to be a day of reconciliation and justice, for messages of hate to be banished, and for those who have sown fear, repression, and death to find no echo in anyone. May every Venezuelan man, [or] woman, who speaks out in the street today find only an echo of peace, a peace that reflects the spirit of democratic coexistence, which is the only lasting one,“ the OAS said ahead of a rally called for by opposition leader María Corina Machado and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonález Urrutia, who is believed to have been defeated by the incumbent Nicolás Maduro through fraud.

”The Venezuelan people have paid a very high price in hunger, misery, migration, disease, political imprisonment, torture, death like no other people in the hemisphere in this 21st century. May the actors of the international community who have been lenient with these crimes ensure that they do not happen again. Let there be a profound meaning of peace in the actions of every Venezuelan man and woman, let there be no place for a single repressor or a single repressed person. The 'peace' of repression, fear, and terror is not peace,“ the OAS went on.

”Today we urge that there not be a single more political prisoner, nor one more tortured person, nor one more disappeared person, nor one more murdered person; Venezuela does not deserve that, it deserves a return to prosperity for the people, that the sovereignty that resides in that people today be recognized by all. A return to peace in democracy,” it concluded.