On September 25, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González, described the recent arson attack on a Venezuelan camp in Chile as an “inadmissible humiliation”. The incident took place during a protest against irregular migration that left at least one person injured and five arrested.
The event occurred after a march that drew around 5,000 protesters in the northern Chilean city of Iquique, where a group of people burned the tents that were used by Venezuelan migrants spending the night in local squares and beaches.
On Twitter, UN Rapporteur Felipe González condemned the violent acts
“An inadmissible humiliation against especially vulnerable migrants, that affects them in the most personal way,” González wrote on Twitter. “A xenophobic discourse that assimilates migration to crime, which unfortunately has become more and more frequent in Chile, feeds this kind of barbarism,” he continued.
Carlos Figueroa, from the Jesuit Migrant Service Foundation, also condemned the violence of this march, “which took place in response to a humanitarian and health problem.”
Venezuelan NGO PROVEA asked the governments of the world to coordinate efforts to prevent the type of violent incidents such as the one that took place in Iquique.
Also, Venezuelan opposition leader Miguel Pizarro “deeply” regretted the eviction of migrants in Iquique. “Today, Venezuelan migration is the second largest migration crisis in the world and the nations are obliged to provide shelter and protection to those who need it,” he wrote on Twitter.
Pizarro, a commissioner to the UN appointed by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, criticized the operation by which a squad of the Chilean police evicted some 100 migrants, including several Venezuelan nationals, who used to spend the night in Brazil square in downtown Iquique, a place where they settled months ago as a result of the migration crisis.
According to a report by the Inter-agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (R4V) dated September 5, 457,000 Venezuelan nationals are currently living in Chile, the country with the third-largest population of Venezuelan migrants after Colombia and Peru.
On September 22, the Chilean government announced that it will resume deportations.
Relief fund
The International community, including more than 40 countries and organizations, provides financial aid on the order of 1.5 billion dollars, 954 million of them in the form of subsidies and a further 600 million in the form of loans, in solidarity with Venezuelan refugees and migrants.
The financial support will allow governments and humanitarian organizations to continue providing emergency assistance and humanitarian aid to the most vulnerable Venezuelan population and their host communities while finding long-term solutions.
Translated by José Rafael Medina
