Chile: collective expulsion of Venezuelan migrants
Venezuelan migrants ready to board a plane as they are deported from Chile, April 25, 2021. AFP - GUSTAVO PAZ
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Fifty-five Venezuelan migrants were expelled from Chile on Sunday April 25 in a plane specially chartered by the government.
About fifteen other flights are planned this year by the Chilean authorities to return to their countries people mostly accused of having entered Chile illegally.
Migrant rights organizations consider most of these expulsions to be illegal.
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From our correspondent in Santiago
,
Justine Fontaine
Venezuelan migrants, masked, handcuffed, dressed in white overalls, each escorted by a police officer, at Iquique airport, in northern Chile, here is what the collective expulsion organized on Sunday in the presence of the Minister of Justice looked like. 'Interior.
According to the authorities, 15 of them were convicted of theft, drug trafficking or smuggling of migrants.
The other 40 are only accused of having entered Chile illegally on foot from Bolivia through the Altiplano and the desert.
Several associations, including the National Coordination of Migrants in Chile denounce that these passengers have not been able to appeal their deportation.
The United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of migrants, Felipe González, considers the operation “
worrying
”, and recalls that expulsions “
must not take place in an arbitrary
” or “
collective
” manner.
After rather welcoming speeches to Venezuelans fleeing their country, President Sebastian Piñera has made it much more difficult for them to enter Chile for a little over two years.
It plans to exclude 1,500 migrants this year of all nationalities.
Between 2014 and 2019 nearly a million migrants (mainly Latino Americans) came to seek a better life in Chile.
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To read also:
The life of Latin American migrants in Chile
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Chile
Venezuela
International Migration
Refugees