BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — The Caribbean Chapter of the International Network In Defence of Humanity has called on leaders within the Caribbean Community (Caricom) to send a fact-finding mission to “make an informed analysis” about the state of affairs in the “sister Caribbean nation”.

In a statement yesterday, coordinator of the Caribbean chapter of the International Network in Defence of Humanity, David A Commissiong, said it is important that the governments and people of Caricom acquire “an accurate understanding of precisely what is going on in Venezuela — a nation that was perversely designated as a ‘national security threat’ to the USA”.“We will never achieve any such accurate understanding if we depend on western media institutions for our information about Venezuela,” he added.Commissiong also urged media companies in the English-speaking Caribbean to send an investigative team to the South American nation to “see for themselves and to deliver our people an independent and objective Caribbean assessment of the situation in Venezuela”.He said the calls were being made following his visits to Venezuela and “finding the reality that I witnessed with my own eyes significantly at odds with the impressions and images presented by the powerful western media corporations”.According to Commissiong, the US Government has determined that the current Administration in Venezuela is their enemy.“And they are, therefore, currently engaged in a multifaceted campaign to bring down the Administration of President Nicolas Maduro by any, means necessary and central to this campaign is a strategy of psychological warfare in which the media are assigned a critical role.”He said the leaders of the Caribbean should “dig through the mass of lies and misinformation that the biased western news media routinely puts out about the situation in Venezuela, and that we offer them our principled support and solidarity”.For most governments in the region, the situation in Venezuela is one of concern, as the South American nation has had a long-standing relationship with Caricom member states.In recent weeks, anti-Government protests have escalated as the Opposition has called for early elections the release of jailed activists and autonomy for the Opposition-led Congress.The protests are also fuelled by the crippling economic crisis in the oil rich nation of 30 million people.