Venezuelan Police detained a journalist this week for interviewing patients receiving treatment onboard a Chinese hospital ship, local media reported.
The ship is the only humanitarian aid that socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro has allowed to enter the country despite over a year of desperate pleas from the nation’s medical experts for help in restocking necessary medication and a food crisis that has the country on the brink of starvation. Maduro denies the existence of a humanitarian crisis.
Journalist Rey Mozo Zambrano of the website Efecto Cocuyo was reportedly held for 40 minutes at the maritime customs office of the Port of La Guaira, next to where a Chinese medical ship is providing emergency medical assistance.
Zambrano had been talking to patients about their treatment on board the medical ship, Arca de la Paz, amid reports that doctors were instructed only to serve patients from the state of Vargas.
“I need an operation of prostatic hyperplasia grade 2. I came here because I thought they were going to take care of me, but they told me that they are only attending to the inhabitants of the parishes of Vargas,” 70-year-old Marcos Antonio Paruta to the journalist Guillermo D Olmo.
“In the press, they said that everyone who needed surgery only needs a national identity card the ID card,” he continued. “I think it’s a joke, I have the heart of the country and Maduro’s Socialist Party.”
Another man in need of medical help, 73-year-old Álvaro Figueroa, told El Nacional that authorities would not give him information about whether he could receive treatment, and was instead told to talk to local councils.
“I came because they had said they would take care of all the people who had surgery and emergency problems, and it turns out that we arrived here and there is no information,” he said.
Last week, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said that the ship would serve people of all nationalities, including 1,200 Colombians, after it arrived in the country last week.
“The visit of this hospital ship is also part of a strategic defensive operation,” he said. “It will be very satisfying to have this vessel in Venezuela.”
The Maduro regime’s acceptance of Chinese medical aid came after they openly rejected American offers to aid those affected by the crisis, despite intense scrutiny on China’s medical industry for manufacturing substandard products. In April, the State Department confirmed that “the Maduro regime continues to reject offers of international assistance.”
The assistance also comes amid warming relations between the two countries, with Beijing recently agreeing to give Maduro a $5 billion credit line in return for future oil payments as they seek to expand in their influence in Latin America.
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