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The Current Transcript for May 31, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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TRANSLATOR: It was hard because the water was coming in from everywhere. The children, some of them were already dead, some jumped in the water, some swam. The situation was out of control.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: You have likely seen the pictures by now, a rusty overloaded fishing boat capsizing, desperate passengers trying to cling to the decks and then spilling into the water, an infant looking like a baby doll, lifeless in the arms of a rescuer. The spring surge in migrants arriving on Italian shores from North Africa is well underway, with all its tragedy and uncertainty. And Italy’s Prime Minister says the real way to help them is for the EU to start investing in the countries from which they are fleeing. We’re on that story in a moment. And then we’re asking a question: How do you go from a country with the largest oil reserves in the world and 10 trillion dollars in oil earnings to a place where there’s no medicine in the hospitals, no food in the shops?

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TRANSLATOR: I have nothing at home. Sometimes I go hungry. Who can say that we the people aren’t hungry right now?

AMT: When the price oil plummeted Venezuela’s regressive government policies and crony corruption was all exposed. And while there are plenty of people to point fingers, there are even more people just trying to survive. Hear their stories in an hour. And a few weeks ago we had a story about sibling bullying. We interviewed experts, academics, but we couldn’t find the victims. And then they found us and poured their hearts out.

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Nobody will ever love you. You’re stupid. You’re not likeable. And this was incredibly frightening and sometimes followed up my physical violence.

AMT: We have invited three people to join us with their stories. They have corrected us. It is not bullying, they say, it is domestic abuse and it has shaped their adult worlds in disturbing ways. Hear them in half an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Europe's migrant crisis intensifies - again - with more drownings off the coast of Italy

Guests: Antonella Sferrazza, Sebastian Stein, Federico Soda

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[sounds of a crowd; disorganized]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, far from the shore in the Mediterranean Italian naval officers are scrambling throwing life vests into the water where yet another overcrowded boat of migrants has capsized. At least seven migrants drowned, at the scene you heard a bit of there. Hundreds were rescued. It’s just one of the many dangerous crossings happening right now. The Italian Coast Guard calls this the busy season. The warm temperatures are encouraging desperate migrants to attempt the crossing to Europe. In the past week, an estimated 15,000 people have made the journey to Italy from North Africa. An estimated 880 have drowned. Yesterday, a new image emerged - the heart-breaking picture of a drowned baby, no more than a year old, in the arms of a German rescuer, putting the world in mind of young Alan Kurdi - the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned last September. The humanitarian group that distributed that image hoped to prod European authorities to do more to ensure the migrants’ safety. Antonella Sferrazza is a freelance reporter with GRN Live in Palermo, Italy. That’s where we've reached her. Hello.

ANTONELLA SFERRAZZA: Hello. Thanks for having me.

AMT: Well, how are Italians reacting to these deaths and that photo of the baby off the coast of Libya?

ANTONELLA SFERRAZZA: Well, it’s not the first dramatic picture of a baby we’ve seen this month. If you remember, a few months ago, the picture of a Syrian baby found on a Turkey beach touched all of Europe, and Italians too. But it’s not enough to be moved. Actually, Italy, it’s trying to have more European help but at the moment the European Union attitude is worrying Italy. Brussels is continuing to insist that Italy opens a new hotspot and, in particular, a centre providing [indecipherable], but at the same time Brussels is not offering any financial support, so it’s clear to everyone that Europe wants to ensure that the migrants do not leave Italy for other countries. So, Italy is looking elsewhere, actually. It’s asking NATO to intervene in the Mediterranean. Italy’s pushing a plan to introduce NATO naval patrols off Libya in time for the peak summer season for people [indecipherable]. The plan has actually been backed by US President Barack Obama and he's a suspected to be approved by Alliance leaders [indecipherable] meeting in July.

AMT: And so where would those-- If NATO was intervening and out there on the Mediterranean, where would those migrants be taken?

ANTONELLA SFERRAZZA: This is a good question. The NATO operation should actually stop the Libyan smugglers and a sensible not so all multiracial nationals actually stop of the really smugglers. So we don't know what will happen to the migrants, but NATO will try to stop the Libyan smugglers. Also, because the trips, as the recent tragedy has shown, are too risky, the only way to avoid the tragedies, according to the humanitarian organisations, will be opening a legal way to Europe.

AMT: And so where are the people - coming from the shores of Libya to the shores of Italy - coming from? What countries?

ANTONELLA SFERRAZZA: Yes. So far, the majority of those arriving in Italy are people fleeing Nigeria, Eritrea, Gambia, Senegal, Mali, and other sub-Saharan countries. Statistics show that this year more than 47,000 migrants that arrived in Italy, the average slight above last year. But according to analysts the worst is yet to come. Among those arriving in Italy there are many minors, many of whom are unaccompanied minors, according to the United Nation Agency, on average 1,000 unaccompanied children a month are arriving in Italy this year. Last year, there were 11,000, but the most tragic figure is that many of them just vanished. They usually try to escape from the reception centre in order to join their families in northern Europe countries, but obviously they face a very risky trip and there been cases, actually, of sexual exploitation or illegal work exploitation. In Italy, we have [indecipherable] structure for unaccompanied children, but they can only help 600 minors. So the humanitarian organizations are calling EU governments to share the responsibility for the care and protection of children across the Mediterranean.

AMT: Well, your prime minister is also asking the EU to invest in countries of origin. Why is that?

ANTONELLA SFERRAZZA: Well, yes, the Italian government is proposing a plan, the so-called “migrant compact” according to reach the EU would offer African countries increased investment. In return, for them, improving border controls and to make it harder for migrants to reach the southern shores of the Mediterranean and to accept, also, the repatriation of those who make it Europe, but are judged to have no right to stay. But this plan is opposed by Germany, so it is very unlikely that the European Commission will approve something like this.

AMT: Okay. We’ll leave it there and pick it up with our next guest. Antonella, thank you for your time today.

ANTONELLA SFERRAZZA: You're welcome.

AMT: That is Antonella Sferrazza. She is a freelance reporter with GRN Live in Palermo, Italy. Well, the tragedies at sea, the ones that have been highlighted just last week, have many calling on the EU to provide safe passage for refugees and migrants. You just heard some of that. Médecins Sans Frontière, MSF, has been on the frontlines of this crisis. It’s manning its own boats to provide search and rescue in the Mediterranean. Sebastian Stein is a field coordinator for MSF for the search and rescue operations and he’s been working on a ship called the Bourbon Argos. Three days ago, he got off that ship. He’s going back in about a week. Sebastian Stein is in Oslo right now. Hello.

SEBASTIAN STEIN: Hi, how are you?

AMT: Well, I'm wondering what you’ve been seeing on the ship. What have you been witnessing?

SEBASTIAN STEIN: Well, this year and last year also, we're seeing boatloads of desperate people. They’re trying to get out of Libya, trying to leave from some horrible situations where they cannot sustain their living and where they're living in horrible security situations. And all these people, they come to Libya facilitated with smugglers and are put onto the very, very poor boats that are not made to make a journey across the Mediterranean. And we rescue thousands of them. It's just heart-breaking to see how desperate people have to go to these lengths, to put their lives in this danger to try to make to Europe.

AMT: And so when the ship that you've been on, when it when it pulls them up and gets and rescues them, what kind of conditions have they been under? What’s it like? What are they…?

SEBASTIAN STEIN: Well, you know, every single time we do a rescue we hear horrible stories from Libya. And, in fact, many of the people we rescue are fleeing from Libya itself. They've been workers in Libya, but the security situation in Libya is horrible and these people have been illegally detained, tortured, beaten, raped, not provided enough food and water. They have been sold between smugglers and militias and everyone tells basically the same story. It is absolutely--I mean, people use words like ‘a living hell’ when they describe what they've gone through in Libya.

AMT: So, when you hear that the Italians are saying they want help from NATO to police those waters and keep the boats from leaving Libya, what do you think?

SEBASTIAN STEIN: I think that's the absolute wrong way of looking at this. I mean, there's the short term solution which is to make sure people don't drown at sea and these last few days we saw hundreds, more than 700, perhaps as much as almost 1,000 people drowning in several shipwrecks. And, of course, this is unacceptable. I mean, no matter whether you say that you approve of migration coming to Europe or not, I mean, it should be absolutely something that is completely avoidable to see people drowning at sea. So that's something that has to be taken care of. But the reality is that people are moving because they're in need and people will continue to move when they’re in need. So, if people in Italy or the Italian government say, hey, guys, you cannot leave Libya. You have to stay. Then people and smugglers will find other routes for them to come.

AMT: And MSF is calling on the EU to provide safe passage. What would safe passage be?

SEBASTIAN STEIN: Well, it's not our job to specifically decide each country’s or the European Union's policies in specifics, but we have to realize the reality. People will be moving. Right now, the restrictive policies that the EU has forces people to use the services of smugglers and enter these boats. So it could mean, for instance, more use of family reunification, it could mean more use of [indecipherable] visas. There are other solutions as well, but anyway find a way that people don't have to go through this dangerous journey. I mean, the journey is much more expensive than a plane ticket.

AMT: So, after being on the ship and doing all those rescues, what image stays with you when you get a couple days on shore?

SEBASTIAN STEIN: You know, this has been a life changing experience for me, this mission. I've done several missions with MSF, with Doctors Without Borders, but this really has fundamentally altered me as a person. Because when we rescue people we see people who are in desperate situations. They're on a boat that’s basically sinking, many of them don't know how to swim, they haven't been on a ship, let alone a small boat, before, never been on the ocean, and we take them on board and all sorts of emotions come out – joy, exhaustion, anger, frustration, bewilderness, you have everything. And every single one of those emotions, I recognize in myself. And during those 48 hours that we spent together with people, hundreds of people at the rescue I'm privileged to learn their stories and I'm privileged to play with their children. I'm privileged to hear what they have gone through and I'm privileged to hear what their hopes are for the future. And it is so fundamentally clear to me that every single one of those people is just like me. It's incredible to see how humanity is really one thing. And so it rips my heart apart when I come home to Norway and to Europe and I see how the policymakers are treating this issue as a numbers game. And when you see the agreement that was made between the European Union and Turkey, for instance, to send back people who have crossed the Aegean Sea coming to Greece, it is just a political game. And now, again, with this arrangement that Europe wants to enter with NATO and Libya, again, it is just a game. No one is considering the human suffering of this this ongoing crisis.

AMT: Sebastian, it's good to hear your voice and hear what you're seeing. Thank you for talking to me.

SEBASTIAN STEIN: Thank you.

AMT: Sebastian Stein, he's with Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF. He's a field coordinator for the search and rescue operations and he's been aboard the ship the Bourbon Argos in the Mediterranean. He's in Oslo today. He'll be back there next week. Several European countries are struggling to balance a compassionate response with growing anti-refugee sentiment. This past week's death toll at sea brings the crisis into sharper focus and it raises questions about whether more can be done to prevent deaths at sea. We requested an interview with a representative of the European Union about this. No one was made available to us. Federico Soda, however, is talking to us. He’s the International Organization for Migration's Director at the Coordination Office for the Mediterranean. Federico Soda is in Rome. Hello.

FEDERICO SODA: Good Morning, Anna Maria, and good morning to your listeners.

AMT: What can you tell us about how the European Union is responding to the news of hundreds of more people dying on the Mediterranean?

FEDERICO SODA: Well, there is no further operational response right now to what has happened. The multinational presence of EU boats and Italian Coast Guard, and Italian Navy has been increased over the last few months and we've heard about the work of civil society, including MSF, and commercial ships also get pulled into conducting rescue operations. But the fact is that it doesn't matter how many boats we have out at sea. I don't think there’s ever going to be 100 per cent safety net for this phenomenon that we’re living through.

AMT: Well, no, in fact, you're saying they've increased the boats and that number, 880, in the last week.

FEDERICO SODA: Yeah. Well, there was a basically-- I mean, it's a very deliberate attempt by the smugglers in Libya to push off these boats in groups, in significant bunches with a large number of people on board. The boats are not ever intended to make the crossing. They’re neither sea worthy nor do they leave with enough fuel to actually make the crossing.

AMT: Oh. So they put them on the boats expecting or just what? The view is that somebody else save them? The Europeans will save them?

FEDERICO SODA: I mean, I think that is part of their part of the logic. The other part is, quite frankly, I'm not sure the smugglers care at this point. Their part of the deal is over. They've been paid and it's a complete disregard for human life in every sense.

AMT: So let me ask you, earlier this year, the European Parliament put forward a resolution for a central asylum system to deal with the longer term issue of settling so many refugees. Is that in train? What would that look like?

FEDERICO SODA: I think there are two missing pieces to the EU policy. One is, indeed, an asylum policy and a more unified approach and another one is a more unified approach to non-refugee issues, other migration issues. I think that certainly needs to be the way forward. I mean, we also have to keep these numbers in perspective. We're talking about a lot of people risking their lives. 150,000 people reached Italy last year. That is not a number that should overwhelm 28 member states, as wealthy as the EU is. And so we do need more joint efforts between countries and we need to find more common ground on how to take sustainable policies forward. Unfortunately, migration discussion right now in Europe is so toxic and is so polarizing that we're in a vicious circle whereby the apparent loss of the ability to control the borders is resulting in further fragmentation and more insular policies within the EU, which it’s not really going anywhere in that sense.

AMT: Before I let you go - we're almost out of time here - but what do you think of this suggestion that EU countries put more money into the countries of origin?

FEDERICO SODA: Well, actually, I want to pick up on that. I think Italy's Migration Compact is actually, for the most part, a very good plan. It goes well beyond other steps. It talks about legal channels. It talks about development in countries of origin, which is a step forward from the fortress Europe inward looking discussions that were taking place earlier. I think that's exactly what we need to be looking at. I mean, again, the future is not in how many we can save out of the Mediterranean. The future has to be sustainable development, stabilizing of fragile countries, so that people first have an option. And secondly, with legal channels if they are fleeing for protection, they have a way to reach safely other countries. And if they have a way to contribute to labour markets and economies the way that we know migrants do, they don't need to do that by paying smugglers and risking their lives.

AMT: Federico Soda, we have to leave it there, but thanks for your thoughts on all of this.

FEDERICO SODA: Thank you very much.

AMT: Federico Soda is the International Organization for Migration's Director at the Coordination Office for the Mediterranean. He was in Rome. What do you think? Let us know. You can tweet us. We are @thecurrentCBC. Email us from the site, cbc.ca/thecurrent. This is The Current.

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The not so safe sanctuary of home

Guests: Lorene, Diana, Roger

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, the news out of Venezuela is growing worse every day. There is political and economic turmoil and now clashes on the street; all of it triggered by plummeting prices in oil and government policy. We're going to go beyond the market reports in half an hour to bring you the story of what daily life is like in Venezuela as the bottom falls out. But first, home not so sweet home.

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I think it's very important to distinguish between sibling bullying and sibling rivalry. So it's very normal to have jealousy and frustration when the new child arrives. Bullying is when aggressive acts are carried out repeatedly between siblings with the intention to hurt and to dominate another person.

AMT: Well, that's psychology professor Dieter Wolke from Warwick University in England on The Current earlier this month. He joined us to talk about a subject he wishes the world would be more open about: sibling bullying. After studying sibling relationships for decades his latest study shows sibling bullying leaves scars that last into adulthood.

SOUNDCLIP

What we found is that those who were regularly bullied by their siblings were twice as likely to have developed clinically significant depression and anxiety disorders by 18 years of age, and this was controlled for bullying which they experienced by peers.

AMT: Parenting author Barbara Coloroso agrees sibling bullying deserves more attention.

SOUNDCLIP

Oh, I think what we have to recognize is the hole that we put in kids when they're verbally abused, physically abused. Initial pain may go away of the physical, but the humiliation never goes away. And we now know that sibling bullying has the greatest impact.

AMT: Well, after that discussion aired on our show we heard from many of you, listeners who grew up experiencing sibling bullying. So today we have brought together three of the many people who wrote in with their stories. We have agreed to use their first names only to prevent their privacy, and the privacy of their family. So Diana joins me from Vancouver. Roger and Lorene are with me in our Toronto studio. Hello everyone, welcome.

GUESTS: Hello, Anna Maria.

AMT: I want to ask each of you about your experience. Let's start with you, Diana. Can you describe how your sister bullied you?

DIANA: My story is sort of two parts. I was bullied by an elder sister and I went on to bully a younger sister, and the story of my elder sister bullying me was that she really impacted my life by an imprint of just negative information about myself over a long period of time; nobody will ever love you, you're stupid, you're not bright, you're not likable, and this was incredibly frightening, and demeaning, and humiliating. But it went on over a long period of time and sometimes was followed up by physical violence depending on the situation, but I have incredible memories of just hiding terrified from my elder sister and also feeling the impact of all those words later in life, and also earlier in life on the school grounds. I would go to school feeling like nobody's going to like me and I would become a target there as well.

AMT: How much older was this sister?

DIANA: A good five or six years older.

AMT: Did you try to do anything at the time about it? Did you complain?

DIANA: No, I don't remember complaining other than-- I'm sure that a lot of rivalry went on in our family because there was a lot of us—

AMT: How many?

DIANA: Eight.

AMT: And you say you also bullied a younger sister?

DIANA: Yeah, I bullied my younger sister and I know I was incredibly jealous of her and how cute, and little, and beautiful she was, and I bullied her relentlessly making her feel that she could never live up to what her elders were.

AMT: So you mirrored the treatment you were getting to her.

DIANA: Absolutely.

AMT: And how much younger was she?

DIANA: She was two-and-a-half, three years younger than me and I know that I made her life just awful and it impacted our adult relationship to the extent that I wasn't invited to her wedding, I didn't get to know her children when they were small, and at some point I just sort of had a look at myself and had a look at the impact that had on her life and I called her up and I just begged for her forgiveness and apologized. I said I am so, so sorry that I behaved this way and please would you be my sister again and please would you just give me another chance?

AMT: And?

DIANA: And we have moved forward and we have a great relationship now.

AMT: Okay, well let's hold that thought there and hear what the others have gone through before we go too far into adulthood yet. Roger, which of your siblings bullied you?

ROGER: It was my older brother who was two years older than me.

AMT: And what did he do? Did he bully you?

ROGER: It all starts when you’re very small, and it's verbal abuse over and over again, and exclusion; you can't play with my friends, they are my friends, therefore go away. You’re the fat kid so you're called all sorts of names and you're just verbally abused all the time and excluded so you feel left out.

AMT: How many kids in your family?

ROGER: Three. I'm the youngest so I had no one to pick on [laughs]. The verbal abuse of course soon changed to physical abuse and I got punched every day for five years.

AMT: Did you complain?

ROGER: Oh yes. I mean you would cry and complain to your mother. You’re dealing with children, right? You have to remember we were children.

AMT: How old were you?

ROGER: When it started? Probably five or six and when it escalated into violence, probably seven to 12. We were children so you go to your mother for protection. That’s normal, right? Mama, he hit me. Well, eventually Mama got tired of hearing this and just ignored me and there was no protection, there was no enforcement of don't hit your brother, that never happened. I was told I was supposed to love my brother because he was my brother even though he was hitting me as soon as my parents were out of sight.

AMT: How did this shape your childhood, Roger?

ROGER: I think my childhood was a mess. I think I was lost. I turned to food for comfort and became fat, of course.

AMT: And then you were bullied for that?

ROGER: And then it rains down on all sides. As anyone who is overweight knows, when you go to say Grade eight or nine, everyone is body conscious so the abuse was at home with my brother, and abuse was at high school and in school with everyone else.

AMT: And it just kept going.

ROGER: And it just kept going because no one takes this seriously. It's one of the reasons I don't like to use the word bullying. I want the word sibling abuse, abuse, abuse, not bullying. People think bullying is something that happens between two kids in class in school, they don't think it's violence, they don't think it's punching, they don't think it's belittling.

AMT: And how would this affect you? What would you think about yourself what you would you think when you went to sleep at night?

ROGER: Well, you had no self-esteem, you felt that no one was ever going to love you, parents, friends, nobody. You felt entirely alone and isolated. I have to tell you at this point I was given a radio when I was six years old for Christmas, and that was my escape. Every night when I went to bed that radio was stuck to my ear, and that's when I started gradually, over a long period of time to figure out, there is another world out there.

AMT: He never took the radio away from you.

ROGER: No one did. Mine [laughs].

AMT: Lorene, you're listening to all of this. What was bullying like for you?

LORENE: It was primarily my sister, who was three years older than me. I had two elder siblings, as well. From the age of about six, there was a sort of a constant teasing, and taunting, and excluding, but there was also a level of very terrifying violence. There were times that she would push me down on the bed, or on the floor, or on the couch, and hold my arms down with her knees and choke me, or cover my mouth with one hand, plug my nose with the other hand, or spit on me, or various ways of cutting off my air was primarily where I was.

AMT: And how old would you be?

LORENE: Well, I remember being around six and terrified of her. I had a place in my closet where I would hide from her or I would run to my mother, I'd run to my father, I would run like--I avoided her as much as I could, but the complex part was that there were times that she was nice to me and she would play with me. Most of the time it would be, get away don't play with me and my friends, but the difficulty is because there were times she was nice so, it be like oh okay, so I guess I can play with her today, so that that message is so confusing.

AMT: And so this went on like into—why did it stop?

LORENE: It's all very vague. I don't remember exactly when it stopped. I just know at some point it wasn't happening anymore. I'm assuming because we were older, we were teenagers, she was much stronger than I was, but that feeling of being on the verge of death, knowing that any second might be my last breath, was pretty terrifying. I grew up with a lot of lack of worth, like I have no right to be here, I have no right to take up space, yeah it was a challenge. [voice breaks] There were a lot of dark years.

AMT: Makes you cry now.

LORENE: I thought I was past it. I thought I could talk about this [laughs].

AMT: Well, your mother died as well when you were teen. How did that affect things?

LORENE: Well, there was a lot of non-presence there from my mother, anyway. I mean, she would say to us, oh go kill each other you two. Go play in the traffic. It's like the normalization of abuse, right? And I agree with Roger, I use the word abuse. So, it was so normalized that what I assumed most families were going through; it's just what kids do to each other. I don't remember her intervening. My father would at times, but I told him when I when he was in his 80s, I finally talked about this and he was devastated because he didn't know to the extent to which it was going on. He knew she would bully me, he knew she would pick on me, he knew she was mean to me, he would intervene but he had no idea the extent of it.

AMT: Roger, what about in your family. Were your parents aware this was going on like you say, love your brother kind of thing, was there any kind of effort to do anything different?

ROGER: Well, I don't think they had the skills to do anything different, and they just brought us up the way they were brought up. There was a lot of this, well hit him back, and boys will be boys, stop crying, you're not a baby, don’t tell me about it, go hit him. I couldn't do that, he was bigger than me. I only got back at him when I got bigger. My mother would sometimes try and come between us with both arms like at the front of a ship trying to part us from fighting, but that never lasted very long because the abuse would continue as soon as she was out of the room. My father never said anything.

AMT: What do you wish they had done?

ROGER: I wish they had understood how bad violent abuse and verbal abuse is. It is soul destroying, it destroys your self-esteem completely. I mean completely, like way down in the ground. It’s not just having a bad day, you are scarred and you are marked, and you cannot recover for it until you start talking about it. It affects you all of your life.

AMT: Diana, talk to us a little bit about what was happening. What do you wish had been done in your family?

DIANA: [pauses] I wish there'd been some intervention, but I think that my parents were, well my dad was always working, but I think my mother was just overwhelmed by having so many children. I don't think she saw what was going on, and I don't think she knew how terrified I was, and when I would speak to it, which was usually the last thing at night, I'm having a horrible life and actually, one of the things that's most telling is that when I look at childhood photos of myself, I look worried and I look scared, and I don't look like the other children. I have a furrowed brow and I look really unhappy, and perplexed, and confused, and unhappy, and I only really sort of began to figure out that it was due to this horrendous childhood abuse, physical and emotional, I mean I have memories of the shower curtain being ripped open and being beaten naked in the shower—

AMT: And when that happened, did anyone else in the house notice that?

DIANA: No. No. I think I probably came down and said, you know mom, my sister's terrorizing me but I'm not sure that she really understood how the depth or was able to deal with it.

AMT: The new research finds that the impact of sibling bullying takes you into adulthood. I'm here with you now, I'm hearing this.

DIANA: Absolutely.

LORENE: Oh, yeah.

AMT: Diana, pick up your story. Talk to us about the lasting impact this is hard on you.

DIANA: I didn't even think that I was worthy of anybody liking me or loving me and so, therefore if somebody else chose me, I would be with them even though I hadn't even thought whether they were appropriate for me. I had terrible relationships, really inappropriate relationships. It impacted me in the workplace in that if I ran into any bullying in the workplace, I was frozen and that's how I came to sort of just really investigate where this is coming from and where are all these messages coming from, and was able to pinpoint all this messaging came from a single speaker—

AMT: How did you find that out? Did you go into therapy, how did you figure that out?

DIANA: I went into therapy because I was getting paralyzed at work. One of the things that is really complex is that I really admired and loved my sister. She was intelligent, and she was artistic, and creative, and so I spent years trying to get her to like me. In the last decade or so, trying to resolve things with her going you know, there's something not right between us, can we talk about it? The response would be either ignored, shunned, which I suppose is the same thing, or hey this is all in your head. This is all you and has nothing to do with me.

AMT: So that's interesting because you said your younger sister, who you ended up bullying, you have reconciled with.

DIANA: Yes, my younger sister has expressed how valuable it's been for her that I came to her, and I owned my behaviour, and I apologized for it, and it's for her, she says it's given her a release from that bondage of the awful things I did and said to her.

AMT: It also released you on that side.

DIANA: Yes, it did. I'm so happy to have her in my life.

AMT: So it's interesting because you're looking for that recognition from your older sister, but she would also get something from it as well if you look at your other experience, right? You would both gain if she could talk to you.

DIANA: Yes, and I'm still petrified of her.

AMT: Why? What do you think would happen?

DIANA: I think it's just old wounds; petrified of the judgment, petrified that she will tell me again that I am stupid and I am nothing, and I am not worthy of air to breathe.

AMT: You know, Lorene is sitting here across from me nodding as you as you say this. Lorene?

LORENE: Yes. I was in a very, very dark place for many years and I started seeing therapists when I was about 18,19, and it wasn't until I was in my mid-30s that somebody used the word abuse to describe what had happened. So, once it was named everything shifted. I wrote her a letter and I said you need to own this. I had talked to her about it before and she said she didn't remember doing it, and I said you need to own this. She wrote back completely denying it, including saying if it did happen, you deserved it and if it did happen, I would have been in trouble, so I didn't get in trouble, so therefore it didn't happen and you know, logic like that. So, I said until you're ready to take responsibility, I don't want you in my life and that's where it stands.

AMT: How has this affected you as an adult in decisions you've made and how you live your life? Obviously, you’ve said you've gone for help, but what lingers?

LORENE: Well, I can fall into the pit of the unworthy at the drop of a hat, and I can have pretty dark days, but for the most part I've had some amazing help. The therapist who know who named it, I'm still working with her, so I've been very blessed that way to have somebody who's been you know, such a help. I have my own family, and I have friends, and I have people who support me, so I'm doing okay.

AMT: Roger, as you listen to them and their efforts to have their siblings confront this, what's your experience?

ROGER: The commonalities the three of us have had are interesting - the terror, the belittling, the destruction of self-esteem. I ran away from home at 15. I knew that I couldn't stand the constant pressure of being abused, being belittled, and feeling like I was worth nothing. I only started to feel differently and think that something was wrong as I travelled. I was always surprised that I could stick my thumb out and an absolute stranger would give me a ride, give me something to eat, and wish me well.

AMT: That somebody would be nice to you?

ROGER: Right. That someone would be nice to me. So, I spent a lot of years waffling between alcoholism, and if you know anyone who drinks a lot, it distorts your judgement entirely, and the abuse has already distorted you and you don't know that though, right, and so you have a drink and that makes you feel better. But it doesn't solve the problem because it comes back, and comes back, and then I ended up with an adult relationship that was violent, alcoholic, and abusive. Now why would I make that choice? It took me years to figure out why I am making all these bad choices. It never clicked with me, the whole abuse issue—

AMT: It can’t be your brother.

ROGER: Can't be your brother. I was tortured. I felt--

AMT: You were a street kid for a while, then?

ROGER: Well, yeah, I guess you'd call it that but, you know back then, it wasn’t so unfashionable to hitchhike across the country.

AMT: But what do you want, you want somebody else to hear you if you tell me the story. Who do you want to hear you?

ROGER: I want everyone who has children to hear me, and to stop discounting what violent abuse is. Act on it. I said when I wrote to you, you know, what is the point? What happens a lot of the time with the victim of the abuse is they are the one who is carted off to the psychiatrist who says, here fix this child. So what do we accomplish by talking about this? Maybe some psychiatrist or some doctor in some small town might hear this and think, oh I have a case for that, I need to look at this.

AMT: Lorene, you're writing a play.

LORENE: I'm writing a play about this very thing. Once it was named and I started to look into it, there was there was so little information, it was a couple of books. It just became clear to me that I need to be part of the solution, I need to create awareness that if this happened to me, there must be others out there. I'm an actor, I have a background in drama and education and these characters, I mean I started off to write my own story and realized that is a disaster waiting to happen, and it also didn't represent what I was learning as I was researching. What I've created is it's a different kind of structure than most plays. It's three separate stories, so there's brother-brother violence, there is brother-sister sexual abuse, which we haven't even talked about today, and sister-sister violence, and emotional abuse running through all three because that's typically what happens.

AMT: Do you have an expected date to stage this play?

LORENE: We open at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto April, 2017. It’s called Broken Branches, the website will be up very soon brokenbranches.ca and it has been astounding to me as I've been talking about this in the last few years, and talking to people and engaging people in conversations about it. It is phenomenal the number of people where it's either their story, or a niece or nephew, or a neighbour, or a student, or the family down the street, or my brother beat me up every day so I went and beat up the kid my younger brother, and we beat up the kids at school, that was just normal. SO many stories that’s I’ve heard.

AMT: In other words, when we see behaviours that are questionable, maybe if you pull at that thread, it might lead back to really the source, and get to some of these issues.

LORENE: I recently heard a statistic that there's seven percent of the health dollars go to mental health in this country, and there's a goal of reaching nine percent, which I find astounding. There is lots of research that talks about both the physical and the mental health impacts of childhood abuse.

AMT: Well, and you know if we're talking about mental health, then we're also talking about parents who have to recognize if one child is being abused, they have to look at the mental health of the abuser.

ROGER: It’s a family issue.

LORENE AND DIANA: Yes.

AMT: And there's a responsibility to get help for the abusing child.

ROGER: It has to be both ways.

AMT: Lots for people to think about as they look within their own walls of their own homes as you guys tell us this. Thank you for being part of this discussion today.

GUESTS: Thank you so much, Anna Maria.

AMT: I've been speaking with Diana in Vancouver, Roger and Lorene in Toronto. We're only using their first names to protect their privacy and the privacy of their families. If you want to add to this conversation, you can find the story on our Facebook page and comment. You can tweet us @thecurrentcbc or e-mail us from our site cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can also listen to the original segment there about the research into sibling bullying in case you missed it. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

[Music: Extro]

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Venezuela's economic crisis hurts the public's ability to get medical care and teaching services

Guests: Doctor Maria Alejandra Torres, Becky Jordan, Phil Gunson

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

[Sound: Pops, mixed shouting]

AMT: Those are the sounds of tear gas being fired as the Venezuelan National Guard clashes with citizen protesters; the crowds demanding a recall referendum against President Nicolás Maduro. The situation's getting increasingly worse in that South American country: there are chronic food shortages, electricity and water rationing, even airlines Lufthansa and South America's largest airline LATAM are cancelling flights to the capital, Caracas. For the second time this year, the president has declared a state of emergency. The unravelling of life in Venezuela follows the plummeting price of oil, the country's main export, coupled with an ongoing drought. It is not just in the food stalls and markets that Venezuelans are being punished, it's in the hospitals, as well. Doctor Maria Alejandra Torres has witnessed first-hand the deterioration of Venezuela's health care system. She is a Hematologist-Oncologist at a hospital in Caracas, she has practised for 25 years and she joins us now. Hello.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Hello, Anna Maria, how are you today?

AMT: Well, I'm wondering how you are coping. What is your day like, working out of the hospital every day right now?

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: We are facing many problems. I would say that the first one is we don't have the regular drugs to treat diseases this like hypertension, diabetes, asthma, allergic situations, okay. But we also do not have that the drugs to treat oncological diseases, so, cancer. We don't have the new drugs, but we also don't have the old ones. They are usually only chemotherapy, and the new ones are a kind of combination, some new technology, targeted therapies, et cetera. But we don't have that, either. So the problem with a patient with cancer today is that if we have to treat them, to treat him, we don't have the whole treatment; we are going to face the patient with maybe 70 per cent of their treatment. So we have to tell them we don't have the drugs. We have many problems that you already know. We are going to do their best together, but we don't know how this is going to end. This is very difficult for a patient with any disease, but with cancer, that their death is somehow near, is even worse.

AMT: So are you telling me that you lose some patients because you simply don't have the drugs anymore?

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Yes, I'm telling you that, because we don't have the treatment. We are losing patients in many ways. First, we don't have the drugs. But we also don't have the regular hospital medical resources. I mean blood tests, regular blood tests to monitor the disease. So we also have problems to monitor the patients on time. So if you look at a patient with cancer, you have to give the treatment quickly, and the whole treatment, because their cell develops resistance. So if you delay the treatment, if you delay the monitoring because you don't have their resources, then you don't know exactly how the patient is going on.

AMT: And so if you have patients dying because they can't get the treatments, I'm just wondering how you see this. What are you thinking?

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: We have-- this is the first time in my whole life and career that we just want to quit. We just want-- I wish to not have to go to the hospital. I know I have to go, because at least the patients have the opportunity to see the doctor just to give them some comfort, but we just seem to be so helpless. We don't know how to help them. We don't have the way to help them. I really have been thinking to change, to do something else; many of our Venezuelan cities will think to-- And if we have to go away to do something else in another country, that's our situation right now.

AMT: And are there people who are trying to bring drugs in?

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Yes. We are trying many times to get access to international help, humanitarian help, but the government blocks the help. So we don't know exactly what are they thinking, but they are blocking them. They do not accept the humanitarian help.

AMT: We did speak to an aid group trying to bring in medicine. It told us it was blocked by the government.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: That's right.

AMT: We heard, yeah.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Absolutely right.

AMT: And what about individuals? I've been reading that some doctors are telling individuals if you can get drugs from another country and get a relative to bring them in.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Yes, of course, yes. [indistinct] help out our situation with in the health system, we have two kinds of health providers: the government, one, at the hospital, the regular hospital and the private setting. Some people from the private setting have some kind of instruments that helps then to bring some drugs from other countries like Colombia or maybe Florida in USA. But this is not something that you can do to the rest of the population.

AMT: Well, that's hardly a way to have a health care system. People have to bring their own drugs in from somewhere else.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: That's absolutely incredible.

AMT: What about dialysis? What about operating rooms? Like...

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Well, we don't have much surgical activity, just an emergency one, and their regular one is maybe working at less than 30 per cent of their regular movement. And about dialysis right now, we have a very, very big problem with the medical resources-- I mean, the material, the medical material, we don't have it.

AMT: And so when you go to work in the hospitals to look after your own patients and you face these shortages, what do you see in the hallways? What do you see your colleagues, the nurses, the other doctors, going through?

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Well, there's a kind of difficult-- some of us feel we have to close the hospital and just keep the emergency activity. But most of us do not want to do that, because the patient is so helpless, doesn't have anything, that at least have the opportunity to walk to somewhere and tell he's having many problems. We just try to comfort them. But it's not easy, because we don't have the resources. So when somebody say, we have just to close and to precipitate the real crisis, you don't have many arguments to go against.

AMT: Mmm.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: But I feel this is not the right way. At least I do not feel this is the right way.

AMT: I'm wondering about children, too. What about infants, newborns, maternity wards?

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: We are facing, some neonatal hospitals, many problems with antibiotics. So we also are recording some high rates of mortality, neonatal mortality, and also we on pediatrician hospital are facing problems with the regular daily food. Food. I'm talking about food in the hospital, we don't have it. So the milk, a special preparation for children, we don't have it. So the parents have to just look around and fix the situation by themselves.

AMT: I'm wondering if you're also dealing with Zika virus.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Of course. We have Zika, we have Chikungunya, we have dengue fever, and we have all-- I'm sure this government will never show the high level of mortality for any, any medical cause. We have mortality for dengue fever, we have mortality for disnutrition, we have mortality at the hospital in the neonatal area, and the oldest people, and cancer. We never will know that, because they are not going to show it to anybody.

AMT: They're not going to keep statistics, they don't want us to know.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: No, they don't like a statistic at all. But in this moment, it's the worst moment to us for that.

AMT: It just must be very difficult for you.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: It's terrible, really it's terrible. We think about it in three ways: us as a doctor, because we are suffering with the patients; as a patient, because the doctors are also patients; and maybe as a citizen, because we have never been so abandoned by a government. What is this people thinking if we are trying to get some international help, for help?

AMT: It's unimaginable.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: It's incredible. This is incredible, really. This is the worst situation ever. The oil country, the South American country with highest income ever in the last 15 years, and this is the worst ever we have faced, really.

AMT: Maria Alejandra Torres, it's really important to hear from you. Thank you for talking to me today.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Okay, thank you very much for the help.

AMT: Thank you.

DOCTOR MARIA ALEJANDRA TORRES: Bye bye.

AMT: Maria Alejandra Torres, she's a doctor, a Hematologist-Oncologist in Caracas. We have another anecdote about the crisis in Venezuelan health care. Neudis Abreu lives in Toronto, but her 63-year-old uncle was living in Maracay, Venezuela, when he needed emergency care. She describes what happened.

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He woke up with pain in his chest, his stomach and then he fainted. And basically, they took him to the closest local clinic to give him first aid and to try to save him, basically. But they literally just declared him dead at the hospital because there was no electricity and there were too many patients, too. So, he had to wait, even though he was dying. And nothing could have been done to save his life. With whatever small chance he had of having his life saved.

AMT: That's Neudis Abreu, in Toronto, frustrated with the hospital's inability to treat her uncle in Venezuela. The power outages and an overwhelmed system are affecting people in all walks of life. On the streets of Venezuela, long lines are becoming a common sight as people are forced to wait hours just to get inside a supermarket. And once inside, there is no guarantee they are even going to find basic items of everyday life, from bread to toilet paper. Becky Jordan is a teacher at a private school. She is in the capital, Caracas. She joins us now. Hello.

BECKY JORDAN: Hi, Anna Maria, good morning, thank you for calling.

AMT: Well, I'm really curious to know how day-to-day life is changing for you. What's going on with you?

BECKY JORDAN: Well, daily life for us, it has been in the past few years, has become increasingly challenging, difficult, frustrating, even humiliating. To have you stand in line just to wait for any kind of product that you need at home that you used to go and buy wherever you wanted and for a normal, decent price; now you have to stand in line for hours just to wait and see if you're going to get it. And we do have, like, this system with the big supermarkets, that they only sell you the products if your ID number ends in a certain number. And for example, if you have, like in my case, on a Monday, my day of shopping, let's call it like that, is on a Monday. There's never anything at the supermarket on Monday. So it's not only buying the fruits or vegetables or meats, it's the everyday common things that you need, like toilet paper, shampoo, bread, butter, milk. There's nothing. It's very, very difficult for us.

AMT: So you were at the supermarket yesterday, were you?

BECKY JORDAN: Yes, exactly.

AMT: Okay, so when you walk in there, tell me what it looks like. What do the shelves look like? What's in there?

BECKY JORDAN: What supermarkets are trying to do for us not to feel so, so bad, is to fill up the shelves with whatever they have. For example, cereal: there is cereal. So they fill up the entire aisle with cereal and you think that there are things there, but there's nothing, really. I didn't buy anything yesterday that I really needed; I bought some fruits and some vegetables, which fortunately, we still have, but that was it. There was nothing else for me to buy. There was no butter, rice-- Harina P.A.N., which you know Venezuelans, we have arepas for breakfast almost every day, and there's no Harina P.A.N. to be found.

AMT: What about things like soap?

BECKY JORDAN: No, there's no soap. Like, if somebody travels, instead of you know asking for, I don't know, whatever you wanted, now we ask for medicines, we ask for soap, we ask for shampoo. Can you please bring me toothpaste? That's humiliating, Anna Maria, it really is. In such a rich country that this used to be, and now we are forced to live that situation in our daily life.

AMT: I'm wondering, we just heard Dr. Torres talking about the lack of medicine. What's your experience with that?

BECKY JORDAN: Oh, it's the same, because my mother is 82 years old. She suffers from high blood pressure. There is no medicine for high blood pressure anymore in Venezuela, and every time somebody travels, the only thing we ask for is for my mother's medicine. Because fortunately and luckily, we haven't been in a serious health situation, but for my mother, it has been very trying and very challenging.

AMT: And you're teaching in a private school. What are your students saying? What's happening with them?

BECKY JORDAN: It's funny because of course it's a private school, so they come from an upper middle class, which has, you know, a little bit more access to certain things, like people that travel and bring stuff over. But even so, they are aware of the situation. They know what's going on and this-- Now, the government decided that to face the droughts and the power shortages that we've had, now we don't have school on Fridays. That's ridiculous. How can we not have school on Fridays? Now we have a four day week only; not only to teach what we have to teach by our curriculum, but to impart responsibility. Is that a way to teach a child responsibility? No, now we don't have enough power, we don't go to school for one day. That's absolutely ridiculous. The government-- we're astonished.

AMT: Mhm. And you know, you make the point that your kids, your students are upper middle class kids and they're feeling it. What are you learning about the kids from the poorer areas of town, if your kids are feeling it, too?

BECKY JORDAN: Yes, it's very, very, very difficult, because public schools would supply children with their breakfast: a glass of milk every day, something for them to eat. Of course, that doesn't exist anymore. Not only that, but many of these poor children don't have anything to bring from home to eat in school. So yes, we are hearing that in poorer areas, little kids pass out because they come to school without anything to eat. And the schools don't have the means to supply them with any kind of breakfast or anything. Private schools try to, you know, give a helping hand to poor area schools, but it's not enough. Without the help of a government, a government that doesn't care for its people, there's not that much that we can do, even though we try our best to do.

AMT: How long do you think this can go on?

BECKY JORDAN: I don't know. I really don't know, Anna Maria. I have no idea because we're living in a war situation. We haven't had a war. We are not at war and we're living worse than in a war situation. I really have no idea how much longer people can take this, because in every area of life in Venezuela nowadays, everybody complains about the same things and nothing is being done until this government realizes that people are dying. What else are they waiting for? We don't know, we really don't know. And they try to appear in front of everybody else in the world like nothing is happening, like everything is normal, that the opposition is creating these things, making these things up, when it's not true. We are going through this every single day of our lives.

AMT: Becky Jordan, thank you for talking to me today.

BECKY JORDAN: Thank you, Anna Maria. And I hope that everybody could listen to this and realize how difficult it is for us nowadays here in Venezuela.

AMT: Thank you.

BECKY JORDAN: Thank you.

AMT: Becky Jordan, she teaches at a private school in Caracas, Venezuela. Until the '80s, Venezuela was among the world's largest oil producing states with a sunny economic forecast. It remains the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world with 10 trillion dollars in oil earnings in the previous decade. So what happened? Phil Gunson has been covering Latin and Central America as a journalist for nearly 40 years. He is now a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. And Phil Gunson joins us from Caracas. Hello.

PHIL GUNSON: Hi, there.

AMT: Well, as you listened to my last two guests go through what it's like living there, what are you thinking? What's life like for so many people?

PHIL GUNSON: Well, you had two extremely eloquent guests, and they've described it very well. I mean, I think, and I suppose the main question at the back of everybody's mind must be how on Earth-- you hinted at it there. I mean, this is potentially such a rich country. So much money has come through here in the last 10 or 12 years. There's none left. I mean, the government didn't save any; the fund that was set up even before Hugo Chavez, the current president's predecessor, came to power in 1999. The fund that was set up as a rainy day fund so that when the oil price went up and then later went down, as of course, has always happened historically, that there would be some money in the kitty. They changed the law, they used up all that money, there's now three million dollars in that fund, which as you can imagine doesn't get you to the end of the street. They ran the economy extremely badly. They strangled the private sector by an extraordinary battery of controls on prices, and the exchange controls, and so on. And the money that they used until a couple of years back to bring in the imports that substituted for what the private sector here was not producing, they've now, of course, run out. The collapse of the oil price means that since Venezuela is about 96 per cent dependent on oil, that we're only receiving about a third of the hard currency that we were as recently as a couple of years ago.

AMT: And am I right with that number, ten trillion dollars in earnings over the last decade or so?

PHIL GUNSON: No, it's about-- I always get confused with trillions and billions, but I think it's about a million billion dollars. [laughs]

AMT: It's still a lot of money. How do you burn through that kind of money and have nothing to show for it?

PHIL GUNSON: Literally hundreds of billions, and I'm not exaggerating, hundreds of billions of that money just vanished into people's private bank accounts, into the purchase of everything from private planes to race horses to yachts to property in Florida and so on. A lot of it was simply stolen. A lot of the rest that was spent was spent very badly. There are white elephant projects all over the country from power stations to dams to railway lines that are half finished that an enormous amount of money was spent on. But, you know, who knows if they will ever actually be completed.

AMT: And this is the Chavez legacy?

PHIL GUNSON: This is the Chavez legacy. Of course, ironically, Chavez, in a sense, had the good fortune, if you can put it that way, to die at the high point when the collapse had not happened. And his hapless successor, hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, who has neither his charisma nor clearly his money, has been left to pick up the pieces. All of what's happening now is a direct result of the policies implemented by Hugo Chavez, and now that the collapse has happened, this government seems to have no idea how to get out of it at all. And they've simply kind of tied themselves to the mast and they seem like they're going to go down with the ship. But unfortunately, of course, everybody else is going to go down with the ship, too.

AMT: Well, we know there have been demonstrations. We heard some clashes in the streets with tear gas. Where's this going?

PHIL GUNSON: Well, that's the $64,000 question. It's a bit of a case of the irresistible force and the immovable object, because the government has virtually no popular support left. The polls suggest that about 70 per cent or more of the electorate would like to get rid of the president this year, and you mentioned earlier, there is a possibility under the constitution of a recall referendum, but the government won't contemplate that. It's blocking it by all means possible, and unfortunately, the government controls not only the executive in the form of the presidency, of course, but the Supreme Court, which is able to declare unconstitutional anything that the National Assembly, that's the parliament, comes up with in the form of laws or anything else. So although the parliament went over to the opposition in December last year, by a large majority, the parliament is not actually being closed down, in the sense that the doors are still open, but everything it does is blocked by the government. So the political escape valve is being closed off, and the logic of that in any political situation, particularly one as dire as this, is that when you shut off the escape valve, then something blows in the end. Whether it comes in the form of mass popular protests, rioting, looting-- not controlled really politically at all, but just popular anger-- or whether it comes in the form of a military coup, a combination of the two.

AMT: And so while you see this this political back and forth, like, what's going on with food processing and just the basic things? Why is all of that grinding to a halt?

PHIL GUNSON: Lack of raw materials, because a lot of what's produced here, not just food, but everything depends on imported components, raw materials, and so on. There are no dollars to buy that. So just to take one benign example, the main brewery has closed down because there's no barley. Because barley is imported. The flour, Venezuela doesn't grow wheat, so there's no wheat flour. So wheat flour comes in occasionally when the government thinks it has a few million dollars to spare on flour, so they bring in flour and there's bread for a while. But, you know, if I want bread-- I haven't seen bread, actually, for quite a long time-- if I want bread, once a day the local bread shop bakes, and if you're lucky enough to be among the first 40 people there, then you get your two French loaves, but if you haven't got the time to do that, you don't eat bread, for example.

AMT: Okay, so this was a rich country that squandered its money. But again, like, where... is there a way out of this?

PHIL GUNSON: Well, there is a way out of it if the government were to suddenly have an attack of common sense and decide to re-establish the rule of law and the constitution. That doesn't seem very likely right now, they've resisted it for so long. And of course, we're talking about a government which feels that this is really a zero sum game. If the if the opposition wins, the government is out, they feel many of them that they'll end up in prison for corruption, for drug trafficking, for human rights abuses, and so on. So they're hanging on, but they're losing international support. The international community finally is catching on to what's going on here and there is now a real sense of urgency in the region and elsewhere that this needs to be a resolved. There were some tentative talks about talks in the Dominican Republic last weekend which didn't really get anywhere, and the Organization of American States is about to debate this in a couple of days' time, with the possibility of the end of the process of investigation, that Venezuela might even be expelled from the OAS.

AMT: Yeah, okay.

PHIL GUNSON: So I'm hoping that will be very fruitful.

AMT: We have to leave it there, but in the meantime, of course, cancer patients go without their chemo. Phil Gunson, thank you.

PHIL GUNSON: Thank you.

AMT: Phil Gunson, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. He is in Caracas. We did request an interview with Venezuela's Ambassador to Canada, we're waiting to hear back. That is our program for today. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

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May 31, 2016 full episode transcript

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