UNITED NATIONS (EFE).— Two Venezuelans have been on a hunger strike since the day before yesterday in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York, in order to ask the Security Council to convene an extraordinary session to deal with the crisis in Venezuela following its most recent elections on July 28.
Daniel Prado, 28, and Franklin Gómez, 33, told EFE yesterday that they are willing to give their lives for this cause, even though they have not been able to contact the international organization so far.
“The initiative is very simple. It is to stay here on a hunger strike until the United Nations Security Council schedules an extraordinary session to address the democratic crisis in Venezuela and the risks that this implies for the region and the hemisphere,” explained Prado, who remains seated on the ground near the international organization, under a scaffold decorated with Venezuelan flags.
Prado, who is an actor and dancer in Los Angeles, California, yesterday created a petition on Change.org that already has more than a thousand signatures, many of them from Venezuelan expatriates.
“It is very motivating and inspiring to realize that the people’s cries are being transmitted in a way that cannot be done in my country. As an international community, we are all coming together,” the young man noted.
Fear
Prado and Gómez, who have been drinking only water and electrolytes for more than a day, said they feared for their health and the repression that their relatives in Venezuela might suffer.
“We are already beginning to feel the effects. There is a bit of weakness, there is dizziness. The ability to concentrate requires much more,” says Prado.
According to Gomez, who also went on a six-day hunger strike in Venezuela against the government in 2013, as the days go by the hardest part will be maintaining “mental strength.”
Eleven days after the elections, the National Electoral Council (CNE) has still not published the minutes certifying the victory of President Nicolás Maduro, as required by law. The process of “certifying” the official result is in the hands of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), at the request of the president.
Political tensions in Venezuela have escalated following the presidential election, as the main opposition coalition, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), claims that its candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, won the election by a wide margin and published “83.5%” of the electoral records to support its claim.
#Venezuelans #hunger #strike #front #elections
2024-08-19 05:59:29
