Venezuela Condemns United States’ Interventionist Student Financial Aid Offers

Orinoco Tribune, June 21, 2024 — 

The government of Venezuela condemned the interference of the United States government which was promoting manipulative student aid offers for university education in Venezuela through a non-existent office called Venezuela Affairs Unit.

Through a press release on Thursday, June 20, the Venezuelan minister of Science, Technology, Education and Health, Gabriela Jiménez Ramírez, warned that these deceitful offers are made by a phantom office called Venezuela Affairs Unit.

“The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela categorically and strongly condemns the interventionist intentions of the government of the United States by promoting spurious and misleading offers of financial aid for national university education, announced by a phantom office called Venezuela Affairs Unit (VAU)-PDS-NOFO Number FY2024VE006, which, in addition, perfidiously declares a ‘peaceful and democratic transition in the country,’” the official statement reads.

Unofficial translation of the statement is provided below:

Venezuela condemns United States government’s interference

The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela categorically and strongly condemns the interventionist intensions of the government of the United States by promoting spurious and deceitful offers of financial aid for national university education, announced by a phantom office called Venezuela Affairs Unit (VAU)-PDS-NOFO Number FY2024VE006, which, in addition, perfidiously declares a “peaceful and democratic transition in the country.”

The Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela consecrates and recognizes the public interest of science, technology, knowledge, innovation and their applications for public interest as fundamental instruments for the economic, social and political development of the country, as well as for national security and sovereignty. In this regard, it is the Venezuelan State that formulates public policies aimed at solving concrete and structural problems of the country and the is only body authorized to formulate the necessary and prioritized scientific-technological competences established by the Organic Law of Science, Technology and Innovation.

The Venezuelan people do not need federal assistance from the government of the United States of America, which extraterritorially applies unilateral coercive measures and with its double standards does not promote scientific and academic collaboration treaties that bring peoples closer together!

Premeditatedly, as on other occasions, the US government fails to recognize the democratic, plural and inclusive character of the Venezuelan national university sector and our robust National System of Science, Technology and Innovation, based on the principles of our Constitution and its body of laws which establish free and quality education as a comprehensive human right, with equal conditions, opportunities and in turn the achievement of the most diverse lines of research in all areas of knowledge, including Natural Sciences, Medical and Health Sciences, Social Sciences, Engineering and Technology to advance in the processes of transformation of the country.

The National Educational System, with pride and dignity, despite the 936 unilateral coercive measures imposed by those who today, with double standards and without promoting scientific collaboration treaties, pretend to finance the sovereign education of Venezuela, promotes admirable and continuous calls for innovative research through scholarships at all educational levels and for all sectors of the country with a wide response from the worthy and deserving people of Venezuela.

This new, illegal and shameless US interference also attempts to create false ideas and confusion in our young students and researchers, deceiving them through an illegitimate offer that tramples on all forms of civilized relations between states, since the call announces alleged “transitions” as an unacceptable threat in the framework of an upcoming democratic election that will demonstrate once again on July 28 the sovereign nature of our institutions, of Venezuelan men and women.

Finally, we make a patriotic call to the entire national educational and scientific community, to the university sector, to its support institutions, guilds, professors’ associations, to categorically condemn these insolent aggressions against the Venezuelan people and its intelligentsia.

Caracas, June 20, 2024