MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay advises against traveling to Venezuela

Montevideo insisted that this was just a recommendation and that travelers may go anywhere at their own risk

Uruguay's Foreign Ministry issued a statement this week advising against traveling to Venezuela, where “arbitrary detentions and kidnappings” by authorities and paramilitary groups are known to have been occurring. There is even a Uruguayan national among those missing, Montevideo insisted.

Venezuela is going through a peculiar institutional crisis after the controversial July 28, 2024, presidential elections which both the incumbent Nicolás Maduro and the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia of the Unitarian Democratic Platform (PUD) claim to have won. Both announced they would take their oaths of office for a six-year term Friday.

However, the retired diplomat has been in exile since September and touring American countries recently. Maduro's ruling regime said he would be arrested if he set foot in Venezuela.

In this scenario, Uruguay's Foreign Ministry recalled that Venezuela ”is characterized by impediments to the free movement of people, as documented by international institutions such as the Human Rights Council and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression (RELE), who have denounced and condemned profuse cases of arbitrary detentions and kidnappings by the authorities and non-state organized groups.“

In addition, a Uruguayan citizen residing permanently in the United States went missing in that South American country after entering Venezuela on Oct. 19 through the border with Colombia.

Montevideo also noted that ”the expulsion of Uruguayan diplomats from Venezuelan territory determined by the regime also implies additional limitations to provide comprehensive consular assistance and emergency services“ but reckoned that these were all recommendations with no ”binding effects.“

The Uruguayan authorities recalled that ”travel is always at the traveler's own risk, and that the Uruguayan State is not responsible for situations generated by the observance, ignorance or non-observance of this recommendation.”

González Urrutia met in Montevideo with President Luis Lacalle Pou, who recognized him as President-elect of Venezuela, thus endorsing the theory that Maduro's victory had been achieved through fraud.