Dictator Nicolas Maduro has faced heavy criticism in recent weeks as lawmakers around the world are not only condemning the Maduro regime for its oppressive communist dictatorship, but lawmakers in the United States have also been vocal about wanting Maduro to step down as President of Venezuela.
Today, grim news has been released showing that Cuban doctors sent to Venezuela to aid in Venezuela’s medical system were told by the Maduro regime to coerce people that were sick and in need of medical assistance to vote for Maduro.
One Doctor. Yasnier Arias, recounts a story where a 65-year-old patient was in need of oxygen because he had entered the clinic with heart failure. Though an oxygen tank was in another room and ready to use, Arias explained that his superiors told him not to use the tank at that time and to instead use it closer to the election, which was part of a strategy to urge patients to vote for Maduro’s reelection.
On Twitter, Republican Florida Senator Rick Scott shared the New York Times article that goes in-depth on the calamity that Venezuelan’s are facing. This form of blackmail is something the Senator called “outrageous, inhumane and disgusting.”
The Senator then blasted Maduro, saying that “where we see chaos and instability in LatAm, we also see the fingerprints of the Castro regime” before asserting that “this has to END!”
Using medicine as a political weapon to intimidate patients to vote for a dictator like @NicolasMaduro is outrageous, inhumane and disgusting.
Where we see chaos and instability in LatAm, we also see the fingerprints of the Castro regime. This has to END! https://t.co/ZkYYI2teyh
— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) March 17, 2019
A dental surgeon in Venezuela recounted that Doctors were forced to hand out medicine and urge voters to vote for the Socialist party, and most of them were routine house-to-house meetings.
“You arrived with vitamins and some pills for blood pressure,” remembered the dentist, Dr. Carlos Ramírez. After that, “when you started to gain their trust, you started the questions: ‘Do you know where your voting place is? Are you going to vote?’”