\n<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s National Assembly has passed a law enacting harsh penalties for those who support or help finance blockades and acts of piracy, including up to 20 years in prison.<\/p>\n
The legislation was passed on Tuesday after the United States seized oil tankers linked to Venezuela, acts that the government of President Nicolas Maduro has denounced as lawless acts of piracy.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cThis law seeks to protect the national economy and avoid the erosion of living standards for the population,\u201d lawmaker Giuseppe Alessandrello said, while presenting the law before the National Assembly, controlled by Maduro\u2019s governing party.<\/p>\n The US has carried out a series of increasingly aggressive measures over the past several months, deploying sizeable military forces to Latin America, seizing oil tankers, killing dozens of people in military strikes on what it says are drug-trafficking boats, and threatening land strikes on Venezuela itself.<\/p>\n The legality of some of those acts, such as the seizure of oil tankers in international waters, is contested. Others, such as the strikes against alleged drug traffickers, are widely considered illegal.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in the presence of a power that acts outside of international law, demanding that Venezuelans vacate our country and hand it over,\u201d Samuel Moncada, Venezuela\u2019s representative at the United Nations, told the Security Council (UNSC) during a meeting on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cThe threat is not Venezuela,\u201d he added. \u201cThe threat is the US government.\u201d<\/p>\n China and Russia also criticised US actions. Russia\u2019s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said that the Trump administration was creating a \u201ctemplate\u201d for the use of force that could be used against other Latin American countries in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw clear support for Venezuela from Russia and China, but also from Colombia, and even from some other member states, talking about how the US needs to abide by international law and calling for de-escalation,\u201d Al Jazeera correspondent Gabriel Elizondo said from the UN.<\/p>\n He added that several Latin American countries with right-wing governments, such as Argentina, Panama and Chile, appeared to side with the US.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line here is that we have not gotten any better sense from the United States on what their endgame is here, where they plan to take this,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the US military had moved special operations aircraft and cargo planes with troops into the Caribbean this week.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a massive armada formed, the biggest we\u2019ve ever had, and by far the biggest we\u2019ve ever had in South America,\u201d Trump told reporters on Monday.<\/p>\n Maduro has said the US is seeking to topple his government and seize control of Venezuela\u2019s large oil reserves, which members of the Trump administration have falsely claimed rightfully belong to the US. Trump said on Monday that the US would retain the oil seized from the tankers as well as the tankers themselves.<\/p>\n Addressing the UNSC, the US ambassador, Mike Waltz, said that oil sales were a \u201cprimary economic lifeline for Maduro and his illegitimate regime\u201d, repeating an unsubstantiated claim that Maduro oversees a vast criminal enterprise that traffics drugs to the US.<\/p>\n \u201cThe single most serious threat to this hemisphere, our very own neighbourhood and the United States, is from transnational terrorist and criminal groups,\u201d Waltz said.<\/p>\n The US pressure campaign has become a useful pretext for the Venezuelan government\u2019s efforts to crack down on internal dissent.<\/p>\n Rights groups have said that Maduro\u2019s government has become more repressive since the presidential election in July 2024, in which Maduro claimed victory despite the widespread doubts about the credibility of the results. The opposition has maintained it was the true winner, and few countries have recognised Maduro\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Venezuela\u2019s National Assembly has passed a law enacting harsh penalties for those who support or help finance blockades and acts of piracy, including up to 20 years in prison. The legislation was passed on Tuesday after the United States seized oil tankers linked to Venezuela, acts that the government of President Nicolas Maduro has denounced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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