Chile asks Venezuela to facilitate the repatriation of its compatriots
The Chilean Foreign Ministry sent a note to the Venezuelan authorities requesting that they facilitate the return to their country of the hundreds of Venezuelans who camp outside the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago asking for help to return to their homes.
This was reported this Friday to the press by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile, Teodoro Ribera, who added that "the Government of Chile is willing to collaborate so that these people return to Venezuela" but that the authorities of that country are needed allow them to enter.
The Chilean foreign minister added that they have asked the Venezuelan authorities "to give protection and help people who are camping outside the Venezuelan Consulate" with the intention of returning to their country.
Some 600 Venezuelan citizens remain camped outside the embassy of their country in Santiago, Chile, asking to be repatriated, after being affected by the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus and the closure of borders that many governments have decreed to contain the pandemic.
The last flight between Santiago and Caracas took place on May 5 and moved 250 people to their homes, but more than 15 days later the street of the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago has become a camp where several hundred more Venezuelans ask for It helps to be able to return.
The Venezuelan consular offices in the Chilean capital are empty and those affected complain that there is no official information from the Venezuelan Government regarding the situation that, like them, many of their compatriots are going through in other countries.
"I visited the street anonymously and I could verify the situation that afflicts hundreds of Venezuelans who have installed tents not only on the sidewalk but also occupying one of the roads for cars and obviously with the current climate, low temperatures and the threat of rain, they are in a difficult situation, "said the Chilean foreign minister.
The minister commented that the Catholic Church and the municipality of the neighborhood where they are located have offered them help and to be able to stay somewhere else, something that some have accepted while others have decided to remain camped "in order to testify their urgency to to be able to return to Venezuela. "
According to data from the Chilean National Statistics Institute and the Department of Immigration and Migration (under the Ministry of the Interior of Chile), as of December 31, 2019, 1,492,522 foreigners were counted in the country, of which 30.5% correspond to Venezuelan citizens, which makes the Venezuelan colony the largest in Chile.
