Source: Sputnik Mundo
What it’s about: The article, published by Sputnik Mundo on Tuesday, October 2, details Diosdado Cabello’s reaction to the UN Human Rights Council’s approval of a resolution denouncing the crisis in Venezuela. Cabello, the Vice President of the governing United Socialist Party and President of the controversial Venezuelan Constituent Assembly, which has assumed the country’s legislative powers until it finishes re-writing the constitution, criticized the resolution and denied that Venezuela is in the midst of a crisis: “I insist that there isn’t a humanitarian crisis. Here you have a grand conspiracy—a war—against [Venezuela]. Those who talk about a humanitarian crisis are the same ones who have created the war against our country.”
The article goes on to detail the resolution, which passed despite the questionable makeup of the UNHRC with 23 votes in favor, 7 votes against, and 17 abstentions.
Why it’s false: It’s not surprising that Cabello is lying about the scale of the humanitarian crisis facing Venezuela, but it’s disappointing that Sputnik is publishing his words without context. Venezuela is plagued by rampant inflation (expected to reach 1,000,000 percent this year), a shrinking economy (it contracted by 13.2 percent in 2017 and is expected to shrink by another 18 percent this year), and a growing crisis of malnutrition and previously-eradicated infectious diseases. As a result, more than 1.2 million Venezuelans have fled the country in the last two years alone. Despite the obvious scale of the crisis, the Sputnik article only includes a few brief sentences of context without any details on the crisis itself: “Various countries in South America have referred to the exodus of Venezuelans as a migrant crisis caused by the conditions in the petro-state, where the government has taken several measures to jumpstar the economy, which is in the midst of a recession.” This piece is far from balanced. It gives Cabello a platform to spread falsehoods without including any concrete details on the crisis itself. For that reason, we’re labeling it false.