Venezuela’s National Institute of Civil Aeronautics (Inac) has suspended commercial flights to and from Chile for an indefinite period, Aerolíneas Estelar, one of the companies affected by the measure, said on Wednesday (25).
The company indicated in a statement that, as determined by Inac, flights were suspended indefinitely.
He also said that the suspension will come into effect as of flights scheduled for this weekend and that from this moment on, ticket sales for flights between Caracas and Santiago will be interrupted.
The company provided a telephone line, WhatsApp numbers and emails to affected customers.
THE CNN contacted Inac to request information about this decision and the reasons that led to it and is awaiting a response. The institute belongs to the Ministry of Popular Power for Transport.
The Chilean government reacted to the measure through its Cancillería. In a message sent to the media, the institution indicated that “this is a unilateral decision that once again places the approximately 800,000 Venezuelans who reside in our country in a vulnerable situation. It is an unjustified action and one that we regret.”
This is not the first time that the Venezuelan government has resorted to suspending flights as retaliation against countries that do not recognize Maduro as the winner of the July 28 elections.
The National Civil Aviation Institute announced weeks ago the temporary suspension of commercial flights to and from Panama and the Dominican Republic. This suspension has not been revoked.
Boric said at the UN that there is a dictatorship in Venezuela
The suspension of flights between both countries comes one day after, during his speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations, the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, once again questioned the results of the Venezuelan presidential elections, which proclaimed Nicolás Maduro as the winner, without the electoral records disaggregated by polling table having been published.
“Chile is especially attentive to the critical situation that Venezuela is experiencing. We are facing a dictatorship that intends to steal an election, that persecutes its opponents and that is indifferent to the exile not of thousands, but of millions of its citizens”, said Boric.
Furthermore, he highlighted that the political and economic crisis in Venezuela has expelled more than 7 million Venezuelans from the country, of which around 800,000 are in Chile. “Out of responsibility, I need to be clear on this point: Chile is not in a position to receive more migration,” concluded Boric.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Yván Gil, also spoke this Wednesday before the General Assembly, where he defended the results of the July 28 election. “President Nicolás Maduro was re-elected with clear and overwhelming support,” he said.
Chile is one of the countries on the American continent that considers that the real winner of the elections in Venezuela was Edmundo González Urrutia, from the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform.
This content was originally published in Government of Venezuela suspends flights to and from Chile on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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