Venezuela declares state of emergency on Colombia border

Tachira state Governor Jose Vielma Mora said military personnel would be deployed to the smuggling-rife border area soon.

On Wednesday evening, Maduro asked Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez to arrange an urgent meeting with her Colombian counterpart to discuss paramilitary activity as well as drug trafficking in the region. “I’m under the obligation to free Venezuela of all this”, Maduro said in a televised address Friday night.

Petrol and food smugglers have increasingly clashed with officers. It also aims to combat crime, paramilitarism, and smuggling of Venezulean goods across the border, where they can be sold for much higher prices.

Meanwhile, authorities will begin investigating the shooting of two lieutenants and a captain, who according to Venezuela’s head of state were attacked while carrying out anti-smuggling operations. A civilian was also injured, but it was unclear if he was a smuggler.

Maduro regularly has blamed smugglers and paramilitaries allegedly linked to former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for violence that has spilled over the border in recent years.

Yesterday Colombia’s Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin told reporters her government respected Venezuela’s “sovereign decision” to close its border, and indicated that Colombia increased security in tandem, to prevent the criminals from crossing over.

“The decree of a state of emergency only 109 days before crucial parliamentary elections may be the escape valve used by the government to avoid a defeat that is both imminent and certain”, the opposition alliance said. It also rolled out a fingerprint-scanning system to restrict the amount of any single product shoppers can buy.

The Venezuelan government says more than 6,000 people have been arrested for smuggling in the past year.