Twitter Silences Venezuela’s Anti-Coronavirus Chief, IMF Denies Emergency Loan

By Staff, Agencies

Amid crushing US sanctions and IMF rejection already making Venezuela’s struggle with Covid-19 difficult, Twitter now seems to have hobbled the country’s vice-president and head of its coronavirus response, Delcy Rodriguez.

Both the personal and the official Twitter accounts belonging to Rodriguez were “temporarily restricted” on Thursday over "unusual activity," with old tweets still visible to those who chose to view them, but no new tweets available after Wednesday.

Relatively, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza called it an “inhumane and reckless” gesture by Twitter, as Rodriguez leads the presidential commission handling the country’s coronavirus response, and this was depriving the Venezuelan people of the information necessary to handle the pandemic.

Earlier this week, Twitter expanded its definition of “harm” so it could censor content on the platform that “goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.”

While it is possible that the muzzling of Rodriguez is unrelated, it comes amid the aggressive US campaign to use the Covid-19 pandemic to further sanction countries that have defied Washington’s diktats in the past – notably Venezuela and Iran, both targeted for regime change.