Source: RT en Español
What it’s about:On an episode of the RT show “Interview”, the topic of discussion is Venezuelan migration from the perspective of a Colombian living in Venezuela. For this, the RT correspondent interviews the director of the Colombians in Venezuela Association, Juan Carlos Tanus.
Why it’s false: The interview is riddled with falsehoods. Neither the questions that the interviewer asks nor the answers given by Tanus line up with the realities of the Venezuelan refugee crisis, which is the most severe in the region’s history. Not once does the interviewer question any of the answers Tanus provides, legitimizing his answers and making them appear as fact. At one point the interviewer cites the Venezuelan government when asking Tanus what he thinks of people leaving Venezuela as economic migrants. To answer the question, Tanus says that overall Venezuelan migration in an international context is scarce. He added that one of the reasons why Venezuelan migration is relatively smaller than Colombian migration is because Colombia suffered from internal conflict, whereas Venezuela does not have internal conflict. That statement alone is a lie. Venezuela is going through a dire humanitarian, political and economic crises, with inflation hitting record highs, dissenting voices jailed as political prisoners, and one in ten Venezuelans having fled the country in the last four years.
Tanus also falsely claims that the Colombian government wants to turn regular migration into a crisis to receive financial aid from international donors. According to Tanus, Colombia will continue to inflate the crisis in order to get bolster its international image and establish itself as a regional power. When asked what Colombia is doing with the money it is receiving, Tanus false claimed that the Colombian government is using aid money to fund the opposition in Venezuela to act out against the Maduro regime.